Lynda Hall grew up wondering where she came from.
At 17, she worked up the courage to ask her adoptive parents about her birth mother, wanting to know more than the story of a “beautiful, young woman who happened to be pregnant.”
They shared her biological mother’s last name, the age she gave birth and where she was from. Then, Hall took those clues and retraced her family tree, combing through newspapers, birth and death notices and city directories.
Her research led her to Thunder Bay, Ont., where, at 25, she met with the relatives who connected her to her biological mother.
“It was pretty wild,” Hall said, now 63, recalling how her mother shared parts of her life, including surviving abusive relationships. “She then asked, ‘Do you still want to have anything to do with me?’”
“I said, ‘Of course I still want to.’”
Hall’s mother, Nancy, was 16, when she gave birth.
She was one of more than 300,000 unwed Canadian women forced to give up their babies in the decades after the Second World War until the early 1980s. Many were sent to maternity homes run by religious organizations — funded by government grants — where they endured harsh conditions, according to a 2018 Senate report.
The report called for a national apology for these forced adoptions. It also made several recommendations, including that the government fund training programs for counsellors to work with those affected by these adoptions and a public awareness campaign about this part of Canada’s history.
This May, another petition with more than 600 signatures was tabled in the House of Commons, renewing calls for an apology.
The office of the minister of jobs and families did not directly answer when asked in an email by The Current whether the government will issue one.
“The Government of Canada is deeply grateful to those who have come forward to share their experiences,” the office wrote instead in a statement, calling it a “difficult chapter in Canada’s history.”
“Legal safeguards, including Charter protections and international human rights commitments, now help ensure that such practices cannot occur today.”
Hall is among the many children waiting for that apology, something Ireland, Australia, Scotland and other countries with similar historical practices have already issued.
Many of their mothers are waiting as well.
Valerie Andrews is one, and she has spent her academic career conducting research about forced adoptions and the lives of unmarried women after the Second World War.
“It was extremely shameful for a woman to become pregnant outside of marriage during that period,” said Andrews, a PhD graduate from York University.
Societal pressures “may have been at least in part responsible” for encouraging forced adoptions, according to the Senate report. Unmarried women’s babies would go to “traditional” couples looking to grow their families.
At 16, Andrews was sent away to the Salvation Army’s Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers in Toronto in 1969. Expectant mothers there were expected to do household chores, attend daily church service and then visit hospitals in groups for checkups, she said.
Nurses, priests and social workers would tell them they “deserved punishment for their sins,” the Senate report says. These so-called punishments included humiliation and degrading treatment — and sometimes physical or sexual abuse.
“It was the atmosphere that was the most coercive,” Andrews said. “Any talk of keeping your baby was frowned upon.”
About 95 per cent of young women and girls sent to maternity homes surrendered their babies. Mothers outside of these homes gave up their babies at a lower rate of 74 per cent, according to the Senate report. By comparison, the rate of unmarried mothers relinquishing their babies sat at two per cent when the report was released in 2018.
Before giving birth in 1982, Christine Nayler was sent to live with relatives north of Toronto. She had gotten pregnant at 15; today, she describes being forced to give up her newborn daughter as her “death day.”
Nayler returned home after giving birth, where she suffered from depression and dropped out of high school.
“You just can’t return to normal,” she said.
She eventually married the biological father of her daughter, and the couple went on to raise three children together. When her first daughter turned 21, Nayler reconnected with her and has been involved in her life ever since.
“She was what kept me going,” Nayler said, adding that she knew they would meet again. “I needed to hang on, so I could look in her face and say, ‘You were always wanted and you were always loved.’”
Andrews also reconnected with her son. By then, he was 32; six years later, he died of cancer. She said her family was with him at that time.
Tearing up about her own reunion, Hall recalls immediately recognizing her birth mother because they look so alike.
She connected with her birth mom’s family, spending the occasional Christmas together. However, she still struggles with “feeling lineage.”
“You do your family tree, and well, which tree is it? Is it the family I grew up with? Is it the family I was born out of?” she said. “All of that ancestry gets cut and it’s severed by your removal from that.”
In May, Hall, Andrews and Nayler joined the group of unwed mothers and their children at Parliament Hill when the petition was tabled. The government has until July 10 to respond.
“For my own healing, I needed to do my piece to try and bring this issue to light,” said Nayler, who launched the petition. “I was just tired of the silence.”
The United Church of Canada and the Archdiocese of Vancouver are the only Canadian institutions involved in the forced adoptions who have issued formal apologies.
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A national apology, Andrews said, is overdue.
“Many of our women who have fought for this are dying,” she said. “An apology would mean so much and it will help women in their healing, including myself.”
For Hall, an apology would validate her feeling of being disconnected from her identity.
“It’s a way of saying, ‘We’re sorry we put you through that and we weren’t there to help you find your origins.’”
