Canadian men switched at birth receive apology after almost 70 years
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Two Canadian men who were switched at birth almost 70 years ago have received a formal apology for being “wronged from the very first day they arrived on Earth”.
Richard Beauvais and Eddy Ambrose were born on the same day at the same hospital in Manitoba province in 1955 but were mistakenly taken home by each other’s biological parents.
The pair, both 68, only learnt the truth last year when Mr Beauvais took an at-home DNA test that showed he was not indigenous as he believed, but instead had Ukrainian and Jewish heritage.
Mr Beauvais was raised Métis, an indigenous people in Canada of mixed indigenous and European ancestry. In contrast, Mr Ambrose grew up on a farm with a family who had come to Canada from Ukraine.
On Thursday, the Premier of Manitoba, Wab Kinew, formally apologised to Mr Beauvais and Mr Ambrose in person.
“It is something that has been owed to them for 68 years – in fact it’s been owed to them their entire lives,” said Mr Kinew, who also referenced the municipally run hospital in the Manitoban town of Arborg where the mistake happened.
“Ed and Richard are here today as two people wronged by the Manitoba government and the institutions they should have been able to trust. They were wronged from the very first day each of them arrived here on Earth, at a hospital in Arborg.
“What happened to you cannot be undone but it must be acknowledged and it must be atoned for.
“While we cannot take back the series of failures that caused your pain, we can perhaps make things a little easier now… on behalf of the Manitoba government, we sincerely apologise for our failure to care for you.”
Mr Kinew shared a story of how the two men’s lives had even overlapped prior to the DNA-test discovery.
As a child, Mr Ambrose asked a girl from a neighbouring town to join his baseball team, Mr Kinew said, “not knowing that she was actually his biological sister”.
Mr Beauvais’s father died when he was three years old, leaving him with his mother and his younger siblings.
He attended a school for indigenous children. However, he was later forcibly taken from his family in the Sixties Scoop, an assimilationist policy in Canada where indigenous children were placed either in foster care or adopted outside of their communities.
After spending his early years on a family farm in rural Manitoba, Mr Ambrose was later adopted after becoming an orphan at the age of 12.
Since discovering his true identity, Mr Ambrose has connected with his biological relatives and has become a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation.
Mr Beauvais plans to connect with his biological family and his two adult daughters have had the name “Ambrose” tattooed on their arms.
Mr Ambrose and Mr Beauvais have engaged Bill Gange, a Winnipeg-based lawyer, in the hope of gaining financial compensation from the province.
Mr Gange told the BBC: “They both have had who they thought they were stripped away because of this. There is an enormous adjustment to their life stories.”
