Babies accidentally switched at birth in the maternity ward make for fascinating stories about nature and nurture. Perhaps the most spectacular was the 2015 story shepherded by twin expert Nancy Segal on two sets of newborn identical twins who got reshuffled at a hospital in Colombia and raised, one pair in the city and one pair in the country, with the misapprehension that they were fraternal twins. (Their mothers who complained that they had given birth to identical twins were told that all babies look alike.)
The New York Times has a new story about two unrelated babies who were confused at a hospital in Canada in the 1950s and grew up with somewhat different racial identities than their actual genes (although that can be easily overstated).
But which is which?
A big problem with switched at birth stories is that they are hard to keep track of, so here’s a cheat sheet about this one:
Current name: Eddy Ambrose
Born: Richard Beauvais
Genetic father: French Canadian
Genetic mother: French Canadian and Cree (Métis)
Nurture Parents: Prosperous Ukrainian-Canadians
Currently: Lives modestly
Current name: Richard Beauvais
Born: Eddy Ambrose
Genetic parents: Prosperous Ukrainian-Canadians
Nurture parents: Roughly 3/4 French Canadians, 1/4th Cree
Upbringing: Nurture father died, nurture mother drank, brought up by Métis grandparents who died followed by very hard times, fostered to Pool family.
Currently: Prosperous owner of commercial fishing boats and a welding company. Keeps horses.
Switched at Birth, Two Canadians Discover Their Roots at 67
Two Canadian men who were switched at birth to families of different ethnicities are now questioning who they really are and learning how racial heritage shapes identities.
By Norimitsu Onishi
Norimitsu Onishi reported from Sechelt, British Columbia, and Winnipeg, Manitoba.Aug. 2, 2023
Richard Beauvais’s identity began unraveling two years ago, after one of his daughters became interested in his ancestry. She wanted to learn more about his Indigenous roots—she was even considering getting an Indigenous tattoo—and urged him to take an at-home DNA test. Mr. Beauvais, then 65, had spent a lifetime describing himself as “half French, half Indian,” or Métis, and he had grown up with his grandparents in a log house in a Métis settlement.
The Métis are descended from French Canadian fur trappers and the like and their Amerindian wives. They self-consciously had a culture and a community identity distinctive from either. There’s no exact equivalent in America. The closest might be the old Hispanics of Santa Fe, but they tend to downplay their non-white side.
So when the test showed no Indigenous or French background but a mix of Ukrainian, Ashkenazi Jewish and Polish ancestry, he dismissed it as a mistake and went back to his life as a commercial fisherman and businessman in British Columbia.
But around the same time, in the province of Manitoba, an inquisitive young member of Eddy Ambrose’s extended family had shattered the man’s lifelong identity with the same genetic test. Mr. Ambrose had grown up listening to Ukrainian folk songs, attending Mass in Ukrainian and devouring pierogies, but, according to the test, he wasn’t of Ukrainian descent at all.
He was Métis.
And so, after a first contact through the test’s website, and months of emails, anguished phone calls and sleepless nights in both men’s families, Mr. Beauvais and Mr. Ambrose came to the conclusion two years ago that they had been switched at birth.
The mistake occurred 67 years ago inside a rural Canadian hospital where, born hours apart, Mr. Beauvais and Mr. Ambrose say they were sent home with the wrong parents.
For 65 years, each led the other’s life—for Mr. Beauvais, a difficult childhood made more traumatic by Canada’s brutal policies toward Indigenous people; for Mr. Ambrose, a happy, carefree upbringing steeped in the Ukrainian Catholic culture of his family and community, yet one divorced from his true heritage. …
Okay, but Ambrose (born Beauvais) appears to have been about 3/4ths French Canadian by genetics, assuming his Metis mother was half French and half Cree:
Camille Beauvais was French Canadian and his wife, Laurette, was Cree and French Canadian, a Métis.
Mr. Beauvais’s father died of an illness when the boy was 3. His mother, Laurette, took him and two sisters to her hometown, St. Laurent, the Métis settlement. They lived with his grandparents, in a log house separated from a highway by a swamp that was passable only in fall and winter. The family spoke Cree and French.
After his grandparents died, the weight of taking care of his siblings fell on him. He remembers the blood after accidentally pricking a sister with a diaper pin. He remembers going through a dump for food. He remembers waiting for his mother outside the “ladies’ door” at the local bar.
All over the world, such as in both Canada and Australia, white people like to crucify themselves for the family problems of aboriginals with alcohol problems.
Then, when he was 8 or 9, came what he called “the worst day” of his life. Government workers swooped into the log house to take custody of the children, who had been left by themselves. …
Mr. Beauvais remembers hitting and kicking a worker who had slapped a sister, who was crying, then being thrown off a low roof. The children were eventually taken to a room with pink walls where, he said, they were picked “like puppies” by foster parents and he “was the last one to go.”
“There was no compassion,” Mr. Beauvais said. “If you were Native, the government workers didn’t care.”
Later, he would learn that the children had been removed as part of the Sixties Scoop, a Canadian assimilationist policy that disregarded Indigenous welfare issues and instead carried out large-scale, sometimes forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families for adoption by white families.
Fortunately, Mr. Beauvais said he eventually ended up with a caring foster family, the Pools, with whom he has kept ties to this day. He learned English, but lost his French and Cree.
… At 16, he moved to British Columbia to become a commercial fisherman. He eventually became the owner of a welding company and of commercial fishing boats, hiring Indigenous and non-Indigenous crew members.
So it sounds like he’s done well for himself like his biological father did. Perhaps the arena of his business success, though, is more outdoorsy than if he’d gone home from the maternity ward with the right family.
He never attempted to gain official recognition as a Métis and, as a result, never received any special government benefits. He watched how Canada’s policy toward the Indigenous changed radically.
Canada has shifted from the forcible assimilation of Indigenous people to reconciliation through apology and compensation and the celebration of their culture.
“It was tough being a Native in my time,” he said. “It wasn’t cool like it is today.” …
Mr. Ambrose wants to be officially recognized as a Métis, partly so that his grandchildren can qualify for grants earmarked for the group—even though he acknowledged that he had never suffered discrimination as a Métis.
“I can get what’s rightfully mine,” he said. “I didn’t ask for this—switched at birth.”
