Finding Family
Solving the ‘jigsaw puzzle’ of adoption in an effort to reunite survivors of Nova Scotia’s infamous Ideal Maternity Home with their birth families
The infamous Ideal Maternity Home (IMH) was a privately run baby factory, operated from 1928 until the late 1940s in rural East Chester, N.S. The agency reached its heyday during World War II when Halifax was the chief military port in Eastern Canada.
Birth control and abortion were illegal in Nova Scotia and the IMH provided a discreet service for hundreds of unwed pregnant women. Many local married couples also paid to have their children born there.
Babies were sold to visitors without any investigation into their parental suitability. Babies who were handicapped, biracial or otherwise deemed “unmarketable” were neglected until they succumbed to death. Their tiny bodies were placed in wooden butter boxes (hence the term “butterbox babies”) and the makeshift cons were buried in unmarked graves or simply dropped into the ocean.
The unsavoury business practices at the IMH were hidden. Several of the birth mothers, some unwed, others married, were informed that their baby had died when, in fact, the infant was sold to the highest bidder. Twins were separated or even created by pairing two unrelated infants in order to accommodate the wishes of the buyers. Birth certificates were either falsified or destroyed. Adoption fees allegedly reached a high of almost $10,000 in the 1940s!
The IMH advertised heavily in Canada to attract pregnant women, and in the U.S. to attract adoptive parents. Hundreds of Canadian babies were adopted and raised in the U.S. without any knowledge of their Canadian roots.
The IMH burned down in the early 1960s (arson?) and all records were destroyed. Although there are adoption records held by the province of Nova Scotia, the government has been steadfast in its determination not to release an adoptee’s records and thus, many adoptees remain unable to access their personal information.
In 1997, I met with Isabel Marshall, former owner of the Casa Blanca Guest House, who provided room and board to house guests while they waited for a baby from the IMH. Mrs. Marshall allowed me access to her visitors’ log and I was able to obtain a list of the scores of U.S. guests who had adopted children from the IMH.
Years later, I discovered a trove of information on hundreds of adoptees transported to the U.S. The documents listed the children’s birth and adoptive names and the names and addresses of the birth mothers and adoptive parents.
Over the last decade, I have spent countless hours tracking down IMH survivors and successfully located approximately 100 adoptees. The data that I provided facilitated numerous family reunifications. Finally, blank slates were filled in!
Solving the Puzzle
As an adoptee from the home myself, I was always aware of my
Canadian heritage but had no additional information. Decades ago, a bit of detective work and a subsequent search enabled me to locate my maternal and paternal birth families. I have benefited greatly from those bonds. My puzzle pieces finally began to coalesce. I remain grateful for the family, love and opportunities that adoption provided me, and I am also proud of my Canadian ancestry with its deep Scottish, Acadian and Indigenous heritage. My personal success has only intensified my desire to help others locate their biological families so that they can complete their own puzzle and finally gain closure. I find it unconscionable that adult adoptees continue to be treated as second class citizens. We are denied basic information that everyone else takes for granted. We remain puzzles with many missing pieces. Our pieces aren’t really missing.
They are just inaccessible to us. We are still unable to access our original birth certificates and medical history. IMH survivors are now septuagenarians and octogenarians. Our birth parents are deceased. But we continue to search for extended families, to find as many pieces as we can, end our genealogical mysteries and solve the puzzle of who we really are.
The (adoptive) surnames of missing survivors and the states they were brought to are listed on our website—idealmaternity homesurvivors.com—which makes it possible for survivors and those searching for them to request and share information. We also have a Facebook page, Ideal Maternity Home Survivors. Possibly, some of these adoptees were never informed of their adoptions and will arrive at the end of their lives unaware of their true identities and, most importantly, their medical history and that of their descendants.
I implore anyone with pertinent information on our
IMH survivors to contact our group and rectify this egregious situation. Closed mouths are indefensible. Reluctance to come forward would be truly tragic.