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Another shocking page from the Roman Catholic Church’s history of genocide!

Maurice Duplessis, the premier of Quebec from 1944 to 1959, and the Roman Catholic Church, Duplessis� partner in fraud, corruption, child abuse and sexual assault, have a great deal to answer for.

Joanna Goodman’s THE HOME FOR UNWANTED GIRLS is the heartbreaking, shocking, gripping, disgusting (and yet, somehow, still heartwarming and touching) tale of one woman’s search for the illegitimate daughter that she was forced by her parents, her society, her government and the misogynistic religious demands of her church to abandon to the ministrations of an orphanage system run by the nuns. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, Duplessis, during what is now called La Grande Noirceur (the Grand Darkness), arbitrarily designated these orphanages as homes for the mentally ill, locked down asylums if you will, in order to defraud the federal government of a higher level of per capita funding. For many children in these orphanages, that change simply meant the doors were locked, the key was thrown away and adoption was moved from a remote likelihood to an impossibility.

Based in part on the story of the author’s mother, THE HOME FOR UNWANTED GIRLS is the fictionalized version of English-speaking Maggie Hughes� pregnancy at age 15; the forced separation from her French-speaking boyfriend, Gabriel Phénix; the illegitimate daughter’s placement in an orphanage, subsequently converted to a home for the mentally ill; and the mother and daughter’s quest of almost two decades to find one another.

I want to thank author Joanna Goodman for the opportunity to read what will not only rank as one of my all time favourite books but to learn about a piece of Canadian history of which I was totally unaware. As if the Roman Catholic Church’s genocidal participation in aboriginal residential schools wasn’t enough. Then we have the cover-up of the nuns and priests involved in the ongoing and only recently uncovered child abuse and sexual assault scandal. And now I’m shocked to discover that the Vatican has this to add to their list of crimes. I’ve reached the point where I can only suggest that ANY person who attends a Roman Catholic Church and makes a contribution to their coffers via the collection plate must accept complicity in these ugly crimes. The Roman Catholic Church MUST be made to answer for them.

And if you are a Canadian who enjoys wonderfully well-written, absorbing historical fiction, you MUST read THE HOME FOR UNWANTED GIRLS. Brava to Joanna Goodman.

Paul Weiss