National Post (National Edition)
Family finally found
IT WAS 1931 AND A NEWBORN JEAN FISH WAS ABANDONED UNDER A HEDGE. A LIFETIME LATER, SHE MANAGED TO FIND HER SIBLINGS
Ababy, dressed in clean but shabby clothes and wrapped in a blanket and quilt and left beneath a bush — that is how Jean Fish’s story began. She was two days old when 11-year-olds Jean Corke (Stowe) and Roy Burden found her behind a hedge at 1456 Montague St. in Regina on Aug. 9, 1931.
It was a Sunday. The kids heard what they thought was a kitten mewing and raced toward sounds coming from under a blanket. Burden lifted the blanket with his toe and uncovered a newborn. His parents handed the infant over to the nurses at the Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers.
They believed Jean had been in the yard for about four hours. Staff searched for laundry marks on her clothing or store tags that could have identified her parents. The doctors in Regina were questioned, but it appeared the foundling was born without medical attention. Jean was made a ward of the Children’s Aid Society of Regina and named by a judge.
“Jean was after the girl who found me,” Fish said in an interview from her home in Collingwood, Ont. The judge chose — Lane — as a last name, because that’s where Jean had been found. Gertie and Daniel McRae, a childless couple, adopted her in 1932.
“I was alone,” Jean said. “I didn’t have any siblings, but they were good to me. I never wanted for anything.”
Jean was happy growing up on a farm east of Prince Albert. Still, she wondered about her family origins. When she turned 21, she wrote the Child Welfare branch of the Department of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation to get answers. She was crushed by the response.
“You will realize by this time, Jean, that we do not know if your parents were married, nor what religion and nationality they were, nor whether you have any brothers or sisters,” a department supervisor wrote. “We are unable to say why your parents could not keep you, Jean, but we do know that it was during the Depression when many parents found it difficult to keep their children.”
Jean was at a dead-end. Then, in 1978, her story appeared in a number of Canadian newspapers. The headline was: Her Identity is a Mystery. Underneath was a picture of smiling little Jean, surrounded by dolls. The story ended with Jean’s contact information.
Within days, she received a letter from a now grown Jean Corke, who was then living in Guelph, Ont. A response from Roy Burden, her other rescuer, came next from B.C. Learning Jean’s whereabouts and how she’d fared over the years “caused no end of excitement at this end of the world,” Burden wrote.
The two Jeans and Burden became fast friends. They met in Regina. Burden took Jean to the exact spot where she’d been left. As fate would have it, the wooden sidewalk leading up to the house was being torn up. Jean took home a board as a keepsake. It hangs inside her front door.
Jean treasured the friendship she shared with Burden and Corke until they passed away. They’d provided some answers about her early beginnings. But questions about her birth family haunted her. “It was 85 years of wondering,” Jean said.
While she was at a standstill in her quest to find family connections, Faye Viergutz was beginning a search of her own. Faye’s mother, Evelyn, had dropped a fateful bombshell in 1990.
“She said, ‘What would you say if I told you that you had a sister?’ ” Faye said.
Faye’s mother was tightlipped about the baby’s birth. She would only say the infant was left on the steps of the Salvation Home for Unwed Mothers in Regina. Every time Faye passed a woman on the street she’d think: “She kind of looks like me. I wonder if that’s her?”
In June, 2008, four years after her mother died, Faye travelled from her home in Vernon, B.C., to Regina. She headed to Social Services to look for documents that would lead to her sister. She left empty-handed.
“I thought, ‘That was the end of that,’” she said.
But her search wasn’t fruitless. Faye was astonished to discover records that led her to a brother, Mark Byington, born in 1930 at the Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers in Regina.
“I had to send a letter to Mark through Social Services, and he had to be the one that decided if he wanted contact,” Faye said.
She waited on pins and needles until a social worker notified her that Mark wanted to make contact.
“I found Mark and four days later (my brother) Dean died,” Faye said. “I found a brother and lost a brother within four days.” Was a sister still out there? Jean Fish turned 85 last August. Her family gathered to celebrate. Her grandchildren gave her what would turn out to be the birthday present of a lifetime — a DNA kit from Ancestry.ca. With her family cheering her on, Jean sent a saliva sample away on Aug. 23.
“Our chances of solving the mystery of my mom’s beginnings was three in a million!” said Sarah Bonney, Jean’s daughter. On Sept. 15, Jean learned she had three possible family connections. Her granddaughter Becca sent a message to all three potential cousins, asking if any of them knew of family members with a connection to Saskatchewan — in particular in the Regina area in the 1930s.
One of those messages went to Alissa, Faye Viergutz’s granddaughter. And, just like that, after decades of searching, Jean had found her family. Soon after, she spoke to her newfound brothers, Mark and Merv. A reunion is now being planned. “Talking to Jean was one of those adventures in life,” Mark said. “I’m looking forward to meeting her.”
Jean isn’t bitter about being left under that bush, all those years ago. The mother she never knew gave her life. She can’t get over how modern technology unlocked the mysteries she’d been seeking answers to. Like roots of a tree, the branches of her family were difficult to find, but, at long last, Jean Fish has finally come home.