American journalist honours father’s legacy returning to Tyrone

A first-generation Irish-American journalist has paid an emotional visit to his father’s childhood home in Tyrone, a place his dad left in 1929 and never saw again.

John Heagney, 74, from Tarpon Springs, Florida, is an award-winning journalist who published a book in February 2023 titled ‘Traveler’. The novel tells the story of Neddy McKenna, a fictional character inspired by John’s father, Bernard Heagney, who emigrated from Ireland to Canada as a teenage indentured servant.

Last Thursday, John and his wife, Linda, visited the now-abandoned farm cottage on Kinnigillian Road, just outside Cookstown, where Bernard grew up.

Bernard left for Canada at the age of 16, and, like many others under the British Home Children Scheme, never saw his parents again.

“This is one of a number of visits we’ve made to the farm,” John said. “But this one is particularly poignant, because the cottage is on the verge of being demolished – it’s probably the last chance we will get to visit.”

John recalled his first visit to the cottage in 1975, when he came with his father, who had returned to Ireland for the first time in nearly 50 years.

“That visit was very significant as dad was reunited with his brother, Packy, who was the last family member to live here until he passed away in 1995.

“The weather is rather rainy and blustery today, and it was much the same on my first visit back in 1975 as well.

“So it truly feels like I’ve come full circle back, and it has been quite the journey in recognising how far things have come.”

John added, “When I was growing up, dad didn’t talk much about his early life here. He mentioned leaving Ireland at 16, but he mostly spoke about Canada, though even, then, the details were vague.”

“I knew that he came from a farm and that he had left Ireland, alone, at the age of 16, but overall, he never spoke much about his early life.

“He talked more about what he did in Canada, but even then it was very sketchy.”

John’s research into his father’s life uncovered a wealth of information about the British Home Children Scheme, an initiative that sent impoverished Irish and British children to Canada, Australia, and other countries for free labour. His father was one of over 100,000 children impacted by this often brutal scheme.

“I contacted the Father Hudson Society, who were able to provide documents that verified my father’s involvement in the scheme,” John said. “One of the most poignant pieces was a letter my father wrote to the St Vincent de Paul Society, stating that his parents were poor and he didn’t even have a suit of clothing to emigrate in.”

Despite the scheme’s promises of job training and a better life, John’s father endured years of hardship.

“My father was sold on the idea that this was the way to a better life – a land of opportunity,” said John.

“It promised job training, health care, good wages and the chance to stay with a ‘good Catholic family’.

“Sadly, for my father and 100,000 other kids like him, this turned out to be a lie.”

Upon his arrival in Montreal, John’s father was sent to an orphanage in Ottawa called St George’s Home, where he would spend three months.

In October 1929, he was shipped off as free labour on a farm until he returned to the orphanage in February 1930.

For the next three years, John’s father would have to endure the gruelling experience of being shipped between the orphanage and sent out to labour for free for months at a time.

As he grew older and managed to escape the horrific struggle of his young life in Canada, he went onto work as a miner in Central Ontario in 1936 before emigrating to America in 1946, settling in Philadelphia where he married and had children..

“Sadly my father died of cancer in 1982,” explained John. “But he was grateful that, a few years before his passing, he had the chance to reunite with some of his family in Ireland.”

John’s book, ‘Traveler’, is available to purchase now on Amazon.