The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

' \ o Sunderland home closes a after 23 years a o esc m c 0 O s Post VISION Editor the administrator at the time of & â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€"â€" the home‘s closing, said, "‘there 3. On June 30, Violet St. John were 37 children who came her i turned the key for the last time in _ in 1966 and were still here when & the doors of the Sunnydale â€" the home closed. For the past 23 C Children‘s Home in Sunderland. _ years, we were their family."" »’4 Established in 1966 by the The Sunderland home was ?1; E provincial government in an atâ€" closed under the government‘s 6 tempt to alleviate some of the initiative to close institutions and Z§ overcrowding at the Orillia cenâ€" _ _move handicapped â€" individuals w tre for the mentally handicapped, _ into group homes. ‘‘The governâ€" I Sunnydale was home. to 77â€" ment feels that they will have a £4 children, many_of whom were . better life then they would have § ; there for the full 23 years of the in the institutions, so they but home‘s operation. them out into the community,"" t ‘‘These kids were both said St. John. But she questions physically and mentally hanâ€" â€" why they couldn‘t have stayed in wl | "We kept telling them that they‘d ‘_:!t O go to a new home. ... but whether 4 they really absorbed it or not is ‘ ’Il hard to tell." : | â€"______â€"__ ‘; + dicapped,"" said St. John, "ang the community they were ! all were totally dependent on already in. fi nursing care."" ‘‘The community of %‘ Though classified as Sunderland has alwyas accepted _'J: unteachable and untrainable, the the home and they accepted the | children cum adults who made _ kids as part of the community,"" 1 the Sunderland home their own, she said. In nice summer Al were, according to St. John, as weather is was not unusual for 4 individual as any other group of the home‘s residents to be found | j people. *‘They couldn‘t talk or picnicingâ€" on . the. lawn. 46 8. walk, and most of them didn‘t somene went for the mail they ‘ even cry, but you soon learned to always took one the kids with C tell when they were happy, sad them, and for as long a$ E1 or in distress, by working with Sunderland had a barber, we & \ them every day. I always just took the kids there to get their ]_j:‘,] thought of them as people who hair cut," St. John. said. *‘We ;; needed special help." . were part of a community. They & But in fact, St. John thought of _ even went to the local dentist."" P i: them as more than. that, she At it‘s peak, the Sunnydale § thought of them as family. Since Children‘s Home employed 60 sf;_ coming to Sunnydale as a nurse‘s Please turn to page 4 S