May 31, 2010
Living Reporter
Nicole Baut
The past year has been emotional for many adults who were adopted in Ontario, and for their parents, both biological and adoptive.
On June 1, 2009, Ontario opened its adoption records, after a 30-year fight launched by members of the adoption community. Adult adoptees and biological mothers could finally apply for copies of their adoption orders and birth registrations by mailing applications to the Office of the Registrar General.
Those who wished to remain anonymous could file a disclosure veto to protect their identity.
Over the following months, and slowly at first, birth names and post-adoption names were removed from long sealed files and sent by mail to people who, in many cases, had longed for years or even decades to see them.
As of April 20 of this year, some 10,300 people had applied for such information.
There have been happy reunions. There has also been disappointment.
Some people’s searches led to graveyards; others to non-disclosure vetoes and the discovery that the person they sought didn’t want to be found.
Sharon Doerr was rejected when she contacted her 49-year-old son. She found him working in the medical profession in the U.S. He had applied for a non-disclosure veto in September, but he did it too late — Doerr had already applied for and received his post-adoption information.
Doerr, 69, looked him up on the Internet and found a photograph. He looked like her father, who died when she was 7. Doerr sent a registered letter marked “personal” to her son’s office, then called the office in horror when she found out that someone else had signed for it.
She received a letter in response. Her son said he has had a good life and harbours no resentment toward her. But he does not want contact.
“I’m just hoping that somewhere down the road he may change his mind,” Doerr says. In particular, she wants him to know she had a brain aneurysm, which would be hereditary, but she has no way to tell him.
Some, like Catherine McPherson, were welcomed with arms wide open. In December, she found her 28-year-old son living in Surrey, B.C., and messaged him on Facebook.
David Hart, who works as a dump truck driver, had tried looking for his biological mother in the past, and was not surprised to hear from McPherson. “I just figured that if she’s anything like me she’ll probably come and find me,” he says.
McPherson flew west to meet Hart a few months later, spending eight days with him, his very welcoming adoptive family, and his 3-year-old daughter, Devlyn.
“It was one of the most natural things I’ve ever done,” McPherson says. They have stayed in close contact and are planning future visits.
The Internet has facilitated many reunions. Almost immediately after receiving her 20-year-old son’s name, Rebecca Fraser also found him on Facebook. On April 15, he came to her Scarborough home. “He was very polite, very sweet,” Fraser says. They plan to see each other again.
Monica Byrne, national director of Parent Finders of Canada, says the adoption legislation needs fine-tuning in a few key areas, the first being the fact that biological fathers’ names are not on the documents being released — even though some fathers signed a declaration of paternity or other paperwork during the adoption process.
That means adult adoptees often cannot find their fathers and that fathers cannot access to their child’s post-adoption information.
According to the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the legislation will be reviewed in 2014. A spokesperson said the ministry did not yet know how the review would be conducted and whether other stakeholders would be involved in the process.
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