The most prominent of these women was Annie Macpherson, who along with her sisters Rachel and Louisa sent almost 14 000 children to Canada over many decades. Another of these women was Maria Rye, a strong-willed woman whose children, all girls, were sent from London to "Our Western Home" in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, from which they were subsequently distributed as household help but usually ended up as labourers in the farms of southern Ontario. At its peak, in the years immediately before and after 1900, dozens of individuals and small organizations were sending children to Canada, mostly youngsters whose parents lived in poverty, or else waifs found where they were left - in blankets or baskets in the hope someone else would care for