The Stovepipe-A Memoir By Bonnie E. Virag
Story: Ron Baker
May 19, 2015
The Mudfords, a family of poor country folk, lived in poverty in Norfolk County in 1940. Then, their desperate circumstances became tragic. Father Mudford, having no employment, turned to the bootleg liquor trade to support his wife and 18 children, only to be arrested and jailed. Now destitute, Mrs. Mudford, unable to provide for her children, fell afoul of the rudimentary "services" of the Children’s Aid Society of Canada. The children were forcibly separated and removed from their mother by foster care workers, bundled off in frightening black sedans, scattered to several foster homes. Many children were handed over to the most unsuitable kinds of foster-care families.
There were two sets of twin girls, Bonnie and Betty, aged 4 and their two 6 year old sisters. They ended up living in a cold attic room on a tobacco farm, where their only nightly warmth came from the stove-pipe rising from off-limits family quarters below. They were banished to live, little better than animals, apart in a spare attic room on the country farm in winter and a chicken coop in summer.
They became literal slaves on the farm," working in tobacco" in order to receive a bare starvation diet, denied even the slightest comforts of family life and love, banished every night to their attic quarters. This was their sad, yet uplifting, tale, "The Stovepipe", written by Bonnie Mudford Virag in 2012. Bonnie and Betty came through every kind of brutal treatment, even the rape of poor Betty at age 7.
Rotarians heard from Bonnie Virag and her sister Betty Mudford Horley; how the 4 little sisters loved and cared for each other, year after year, as they cycled from farm to farm and foster family to foster family, through the 1940’s and 50’s. By a miracle of mutual sisterly love and sheer determination, they survived many ordeals too heartbreaking to imagine, as recounted in Bonnie Virag’s award winning book The Stovepipe. Each girl eventually reached adulthood, scarred but unbroken. They found husbands and married. Their bonds became deep, life-long; emotionally inseparable.
This honest, shocking, book, reveals many terrible failures of the Children’s Aid Society of Canada 60 to 75 years ago. It is a spell binding story, a clarion call to community vigilance on behalf of unfortunate children who, through no fault of their own, may still be caught up in dangerous foster-care families. Today, The Stovepipe is required reading by all Children’s Aid Society officials, supervisors and managers who care for fostered children. Simcoe Rotarians were deeply moved to hear about the ordeal