If I wanted to fly from Toronto, Canada, to Melbourne, Australia, Google tells me it would take 1 day and 1 hour. That’s pretty far for this week’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompt, “So far away”.
Canada, where I live, and Australia — 25 hours away by plane — have many similarities in their histories of settlement and racist British colonial policies. In each country, there are recent improvements for Indigenous Peoples and also many recent setbacks for human rights and reconciliation.
Both countries were among the four nations that voted against the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, along with New Zealand and the United States (Eleven other countries abstained). It took Australia two years to change its position about UNDRIP, which it did in 2009. Canada followed, endorsing UNDRIP in 2010, but only officially removing objections to it in 2016.
In Canada, only the province of British Columbia has tabled a law adopting UNDRIP, which it did in late 2019. The Federal government position is that it is a non-binding declaration. A private member’s bill was defeated last year.
Indigenous People’s rights to land and to decision-making about natural resources are clearly stated in UNDRIP. And Canada’s natural resources are the backbone of the economy. This 2017 Globe and Mail editorial was clear about the fear-factor, saying application of UNDRIP for anything more than consultative decision-making would be “disastrous.”
But would it really? Sadly, the first thing I think of when I hear “Australia” today is the continuing severity of the 2019/2020 bush fire season. These fires have had a terrible impact on Indigenous communities as well as settler communities and have brought increasing attention to the benefits of Aboriginal fire management practises in Australia. In reading more about this, I also learned about the work of Dr. Amy Cardinal Christianson, a Métis/Cree woman raised in Treaty 8 territory and a fire scientist. Her podcast series Good Fire, made last fall with Your Forest host Matthew Kristoff, looks at Indigenous fire practices around the world.
Even though Australia is so far away, it is surprisingly close. I wonder if my stepfather’s ancestor Esther Anne Howard (nee Camplin) and her family found it to be similar when they came to Canada from Australia in the 19th Century.
Esther Anne Camplin was born in Emerald Hill (now part of Melbourne), Victoria in 1857, on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri people. The year of her birth is noted in the Australia Birth Index on Ancestry. Her parents, Edward Miram Camplin and Lucy Melchar Edwards, had been married in Melbourne, at St. Peter’s Anglican Church, which still stands on Eastern Hill in Melbourne. Rev. William Merry performed the marriage ceremony on February 11, 1851.
Lucy Melchar Edwards was born in Islington, Middlesex, England in about 1833. A passenger list shows her listed among the “Female Immigrants” who arrived in Victoria from England on the ship Culloden, on July 5, 1850. Lucy Edwards was an 18 year-old housemaid. (Victoria, Australia, Assisted and Unassisted Passenger Lists, 1839-1923, Public Record Office Victoria via Ancestry). She was part of an immigration society scheme focused on getting women to immigrate to Australia.
Dispatch No. 25 dated July 18, 1850, from C.J. La Trobe Esq., Superintendent of Port Phillip, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies (published in Accounts and papers, Volume 10, Great Britain House of Commons) noted, “I take leave to apprize your Lordship that the ship “Culloden” arrived at this port on the 5th instant, bringing out 36 females sent by the above Association. They were immediately upon their landing, received in the immigration depot, where, fortunately, the requisite accommodation could, without difficulty, at this time be afforded, and placed under the charge and the superintendence of the local Immigration Board. The great majority, I may add, have readily met with engagements with respectable employers.” This seems true for Lucy Edwards, who was noted as going to Mrs. Fyffe in Melbourne.
It doesn’t seem that Lucy stayed in employment for very long though, as she and Edward Camplin were married within months of her arrival. Edward Miriam Camplin was also English born, baptized at St. Swithin’s in Lincoln on January 4, 1829, according to the Family Search index England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975. I haven’t yet found any records of when or how he arrived in Australia, or what he did there. However, Edward and Lucy Camplin had at least three daughters in Emerald Hill: Eliza (1854) in Australia, Esther (about 1857), and Emma, who died in infancy.
The journey to Australia could take up to four months, in absolutely dismal conditions. It seems incredible to me that Edward and Lucy would be willing to take another voyage, but they did make that decision. They certainly covered more distance in their lives than I have in mine, and they had to do it in fetid sailing ships supplied with contaminated water and disgusting food.
I also haven’t found anything conclusive about when the Camplin family left Australia or when they came to Canada. It seems most likely that they would have sailed back to England and then travelled to Canada. In any case, they arrived in Toronto in time for the 1871 Census, living in St. George’s Ward. They were not an economically well-off family. In the Census Edward Camplin was working as a labourer, and the couple’s two surviving children, 17 year-old Eliza and 14 year-old Esther were a servant and a seamstress respectively. Lucy Camplin, who was 38, was keeping house. The 1872-73 Directory of Toronto lists Edward Camplin, labourer, at 36 Bathurst Street, near Niagara Street, a home the Camplins shared with another family.
Here in Toronto, Esther met a Quebec City-born blacksmith named Alfred William Howard. In the 1872-73 Directory of Toronto, he was located at 415 Queen Street West, just near the corner of Portland Street, a few buildings away from the intersection with Bathurst. Since they lived in the same neighbourhood and were both Church of England, they may have gotten to know each other at nearby St. John’s Church.
However, the couple weren’t married at St. John’s. They married with a license in Streetsville, a community far to the west of Toronto, now part of Mississauga. On their marriage certificate, he gave his age as 27 and she as 22 years old when they married on May 24, 1875. Other records would suggest that their actual ages were a bit different than the ones they gave to the minister. She would have been 18, and he 31. Did they elope to Streetsville, I wonder, or decide to have a destination wedding in an attractive spot?
Certainly the Howards had a long marriage and raised a large family of children together,. They lived in a nice house at 172 Windermere Avenue, in the Village of Swansea, which is now part of West Toronto. There is a great family photograph of them posted here. Alfred died in 1915, and Esther 20 years later in 1935. Her death record notes her far away birthplace of Australia.
Root and Blade 