Facebook followup reveals she has ‘whole other family’
Island woman finds three siblings, will meet brother Monday
When I first spoke to my younger sister, she told me she used to look for my face in crowds.” Adele Bruce
Adele Bruce was scanning through an old friend’s Facebook posts one evening last November when she came across a name she recognized.
A photo taken at a summer wedding in Scotland showed a woman in a blue-lace dress smiling on the arm of a man with a raised Champagne glass. It was captioned “Amanda Cowans.”
Bruce, who immigrated to Canada from Scotland with her adoptive parents in 1988, noted the woman’s last name and, on a lark, sent her a quick message to ask if she knew Bruce’s birth mother, whose surname was also Cowans.
“I never set out to find my birth parents,” Bruce told Postmedia Thursday from her home on Vancouver Island. “I’d never searched for them, and I had no intention of doing so. But before I knew it, I’d sent that message.”
What happened next was like “something out of a storybook.”
Cowans replied that her own mother had died more than two decades ago, but before her death, she told her children they had a half-sister named Adele who had been adopted at birth. Cowans asked Bruce to request Bruce’s official birth certificate from the National Records of Scotland, which would show her birth parents’ names.
“When the letter came I was terrified to open it,” Bruce said.
She eventually did, and it confirmed her birth mother was the same as Cowans’ mother. All at once, Bruce, 50, had two half-sisters and a half-brother.
“I’ve always worried about being alone,” she said. Her adoptive mother died recently and she lives with her elderly adoptive father in Sidney. She has no children or siblings.
“Now I have this whole other family.”
None of her siblings have been able to tell Bruce her birth father’s name. It was also left blank on her birth certificate. She is the second-oldest of her siblings, who have two different fathers as well.
“There are some things I’ll never know,” Bruce said. “My parents told me that my birth mother almost changed her mind before the adoption. She didn’t take it lightly.”
Bruce grew up with her adoptive parents in a small village near Dundee, Scotland. They had little information about her birth mother, apart from her last name. Unknown to them, however, she lived in a neighbouring village.
“When I first spoke to my younger sister, she told me she used to look for my face in crowds,” Bruce said.
But her siblings also had sombre news, telling Bruce that breast cancer runs in her family. Her birth mother had a double mastectomy in 1982 and died from liver cancer in 1992.
“I now know my medical history, so I’ve been to my doctor to have some tests,” she said.
Bruce was unable to get time off work to visit Scotland, but her half-brother Mark Worsfold planned a five-day trip to B.C. to meet her. He’s expected to arrive in Vancouver on Monday night, and the two siblings are planning a B.C. road trip to celebrate.
Bruce, who works at a Sidney hotel, has not been able to get the last day of her brother’s visit off work. She’s prepared to take the day anyway, even if it means losing her job.
“I know that sometimes people find their family and it doesn’t work out,” she said. “But it’s been wonderful. I just want to make the most of the time we have together.”