Switched, eh? Sorry: Canada
Two Canadian men who discovered they were switched at birth from a DNA test finally received a formal apology from the government nearly 70 years after the lifechanging mistake.
Richard Beauvais and Eddy Ambrose, 68, were born on the same day in the same hospital in Arborg, Manitoba, in 1955, according to the BBC.
However, a major error in the hospital led to Beauvais and Ambrose being taken home by each other’s biological parents.
The two men sat sideby-side on Thursday to hear Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew make a formal apology for the years they spent away from their biological families.
“I rise today to deliver an apology that has been a long time coming, for actions that harmed two children, two sets of parents and two families across many generations,” Kinew said in the Manitoba Legislative Assembly.
Beauvais, who grew up in Sechelt, British Columbia, believed he was an indigenous person for his entire life. In 2020, he took a DNA test that revealed
he was actually a mix of Ukrainian, Ashkenazi Jewish and Polish.
By chance, Eddy Ambrose’s sister Evelyn Stocki took a DNA test in Winnipeg, Manitoba — nearly 1,500 miles away from Beauvais’ home, shockingly revealing that Beauvais was her biological brother.
The men’s lawyer, Bill Gange, told the BBC the mix put them both on totally different trajectories in life.
Beauvais’ father, who is Ambrose’s biological father, died when he was 3 years old. Beauvais was later forcibly taken from his family in Canada’s policy in which indigenous children were placed in
foster care or adopted away from their communities, known as the “Sixties Scoop.”
Ambrose grew up on a rural farm in Manitoba, had a “very loving and very supportive Ukrainian ancestral family,” and was unaware of his indigenous heritage, Gange told the outlet.
Ambrose would also later be adopted at 12 after becoming an orphan.
“They both have had who they thought they were stripped away because of this,” Gange said.
Beauvais, who prided himself on his heritage, is now coming to terms with the fact that all his relatives and friends were “indigenous but him.”