The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Off the record
How one Nova Scotian is fighting to change the system, and understand his life
Late one night in his Halifax duplex, Scott Pyke opened a door he would never be able to close. Egged on by liquid courage and frustration he joined the Facebook group Adopted in Nova Scotia.
He did not want to be like the others. “I started reading all these stories where people were trying to find their family members,” Pyke said. “And they were all dead.”
On that December night in 2018, Pyke posted the only information he had: born in Cape Breton, date of birth, and family name. He also knew his mom was white and his dad was mixed-race, he knew from his basic records.
That was all he had.
The next month Pyke applied for identifying information but was given no timeframe for when he would receive it. Searches are done on a first-come, first-served basis. Fifteen months later, Pyke still has not received his records.
After three months of silence Pyke tried a free DNA test for adoptees, but it didn't give him a lot of information. He then decided to pay $129 to Ancestory.com. Six weeks later the results came back with a solid match.
Seeing someone in the database shared a high amount of DNA sequences Pyke “started to freak out.” The results also showed what it meant when his basic records said his dad was mixed-raced. His birth dad was black.
Pyke quickly called Teresa Maceachern of Antigonish, who had been helping him search. She enjoys helping families unite, so has made this her hobby. When Maceachern heard the match's name, Pyke received another shock: Maceachern and the match had gone to school together in Antigonish. “It is you,” Maceachern said. “What do you mean it is me?” “You will not believe this; I know people say this all the time. But your family has been looking for you for 30plus years.'”
The DNA match was Theresa Brewster, who lives in Cape Breton. Brewster is his aunt, his dad's sister.
After talking to Maceachern Pyke's emotions were running high. Nervous, excited and scared all at the same time, he called his aunt.
He introduced himself by saying, “I think you know who this is.” She asked his birth date and when he told her, he says, she broke down in tears.
She then asked if he had been OK growing up. After decades of his father's family not knowing, he put her mind at ease and said that everything, yes, was fine, he had had a good home.
They talked for 45 minutes. Then she got off the line to call his father, also in Cape Breton, and tell him the news.
REUNIONS
Pyke met his birth father, Pat Brewster, for the first time last October, after a wait of 36 years and 10 months.
Pat, who drove down from Cape Breton, was nervous when he came in. Yet he relaxed once they started talking.
There was a lot of regret on Pat's part, said Pyke. When Pyke was born both parents were just 16. Pat knew of the pregnancy but didn't know until months later that the baby had been up for adoption.
Pyke told him he wasn't angry though. He understood that in the ‘80s there weren't many support systems for single parents.
Pyke has met a lot family on his father's side. One cousin, Erica Brewster, only lives a short drive away.
“It is the best thing ever. Everyone in our family just embraced him,” says Erica. It is just like: he is my cousin.
That's it."
It is not hard to tell that Brewster and Pyke are related. Sitting on a new couch in a living room with his young daughter's toys lay about, they share stories with the same sense of humour. Both have an inviting and warm way of talking to you, like you too are family.
Pyke also got in touch with his birth mother. They didn't talk much but he went up to see her in Cape Breton. They met at a Tim Hortons for a couple of hours. He says it went well, but that relationship is more complicated than the one with Pat. Her side of the family doesn't know that the mother and son are talking.
Pyke says a lot of reconnections don't consist of happy tears and long hugs. Instead, some mothers do not want contact. Some fathers don't, either, or don't even know the adoption happened.
ADOPTION RECORDS
Aiming to improve access to birth records, in February 2019 Pyke created a Facebook group, the Nova Scotia Adoptee Advocacy Group. Nova Scotians can wait more than a year for identifying information in part because the province, until recently was committed to closed records. In March, though, after years of adoption groups pressing for change, the government announced plans to open adoption records by the fall. Nova Scotia will be the last province to do so.
When people apply for identifying records a Department of Community Services staff member searches for records of the parents or child. If the parent or child is found, the department asks that person if they consent to contact. If they say no, the applicant receives no identifying information.
Pyke assumes that when Nova Scotia opens its records, like other provinces, it will give birth parents and adoptees a year to submit a disclosure veto and/or a contact preference.
A contact veto is an application in which a person chooses if and how they want to be contacted. Even if they want no contact they can choose to give out identifying information. A disclosure veto, however, ensures no identifying information is released.
Pyke will fight to ensure that these privacy measures, and other conditions his advocacy group is lobbying for, make it into the legislation.
His only meeting with one cousin was when that person was on life support following a heart attack. Without meeting the Brewsters, he would never have known that heart attacks run in the family. He never got to know one of his grandmothers, either. She passed away in 2015.
While desired, getting all this new information can be overwhelming. “No one tells you you are going to have moments where you freak out because it's just too much to handle all at once.”
Pyke's adoption advocacy group will hopefully help people navigate their lives post reunion by sharing their own experiences. But with advocacy groups only able do so much, Pyke wants the government to create support systems.
Nova Scotia's plan to open the records is a win for many, but Pyke says the sad reality is that a lot of records from the '40s to the '80s are missing information.
According to a Toronto Star article from December 2009, when Ontario opened its records in June of that year there were 250,000 adoption registrations. Less than 10 per cent of them included the father's name.
This means that to see the whole picture of who they are, other Nova Scotians will need to undergo a journey like Pyke's – and everything that comes with it, the good, the bad and the ugly.