Métis citizenship gives man switched at birth new lease on life

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This article was published 14/02/2024 (958 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG — A Manitoba man who was switched at birth and raised without being aware of his heritage for more than 60 years says he feels a sense of belonging after receiving his Métis citizenship.

“My identity is something I lost a long time ago,” Edward Ambrose said in a news release.

“I’m 68 now, so being welcomed into the Red River Métis family really touches my heart.”

Ambrose received his Manitoba Métis Federation citizenship card in Winnipeg on Tuesday. He was accompanied by his daughter, Eileen, and his biological sister Leona.

“I am proud to be with my family, and it feels so powerful and meaningful to receive my card,” Ambrose said.

“I will always love my other family too, but I feel like this is where I belong – where I have always belonged.”

David Chartrand, president of the Manitoba Métis Federation, said the citizenship card doesn’t change what happened but it will allow Ambrose to look forward to a future with his people.

“I think it is like he is reborn in many aspects,” Chartrand said.

“He just went into tears here (on Tuesday). He was just so overwhelmed. For him, it is such a sense of belonging again. He is soaking it in as much as he can. He will now be a part of our culture and people.”

Ambrose was born in 1955 in a hospital in the Interlake town of Arborg, on the same day as a baby named Richard Beauvais. The babies were sent home with the wrong families.

They grew up, got married and had children of their own. For decades they were unaware of each other or the puzzle piece that would tie the two men together.

Ambrose was raised in a Ukrainian family and has said he has good memories of growing up in Rembrandt, a farming community south of Arborg. Both his mother and father died by the time he was 12. Ambrose was shuffled between relatives and then placed with a foster family who adopted him.

The other man, Beauvais, has said his father diedat a young age and his mother struggled to raise him and his siblings in Saint Laurent, a Métis community on the eastern shore of Lake Manitoba. He was sent to a residential day school, was picked on for being Indigenous and was taken from his family and placed in foster homes.

He became a commercial fisherman and moved to British Columbia.

The truth that the two had been sent home with the wrong families was only discovered a few years ago through at-home ancestry DNA kits. It upended both men’s lives as they tried to navigate their past and what it meant for their future.

Ambrose embarked on a path to explore his Métis identity.

Chartrand said Ambrose told him that “for most of his life he was Ukrainian.”

“He said, ‘I had so many perogies in my life and now I will eat a lot of bannock, fish and moose meat.”

Chartrand said Ambrose will have other benefits including free prescription drugs and eyeglass replacement.

The leader said he hopes Ambrose gets even more.

“One of the things I’m hoping for is for the province to compensate these two individuals for suffering such a giant robbery of their culture,” he said.

— with The Canadian Press files