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All rights reserved Parent Finders NB and Irene Doyle ©2018
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NEW BRUNSWICK RECORDS ARE OPENED AS OF APRIL 1, 2018 Since April 1, 2018 adopted persons now have the right to apply for and receive a Statement of Original Birth Registration, and natural parents can now apply for and receive the adopted names of the child they lost to adoption.Unless there is a "Veto"
Information/Guidelines on the Release of Identifying Information
NON-IDENTIFYING INFORMATION
Non-identifying information is available to natural parents, adoptees, and other natural family members. New Brunswick also maintains a passive registry and staff will also conduct active searches on behalf of adult adoptees and natural parents. There is no charge for this service however, there continues to be a long waiting list.
Post Adoption Disclosure Services
Sartain MacDonald Building
Floor: 4, P. O. Box 6000
Fredericton, NB E3B 5H1
Phone: (506) 453-2001TO OBTAIN A STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL BIRTH REGISTRATION (ADOPTEES) OR COPY OF THE ADOPTION ORDER (BIRTH PARENTS) you will need to submit an application to Post Adoption Disclosure Services via the links below.
STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL BIRTH REGISTRATION
All for forms that you will need to access are on the page above in the lower right hand side of the page. You will need to print out the forms and submit. Once you submit the requests, be sure to check with PAS regularly to check on the status of your request.
If you need any assistance in filling out the forms or direction once you receive your information, the staff at PARENTFINDERSNB are here to help in any way that we can.
FACEBOOK PAGE
We have a Facebook page where we welcome your stories of search and reunion - here is the link to that page.
Article about Adoptions in the Daily Gleaner:
FORCED ADOPTIONS
The Evangeline Home at 260 Princess St, Saint John, NBOttawa, A "shameful period in Canada's history" has a New Brunswick connection that affected thousands just decades ago.
Unwed mothers were forced to give their babies up for adoption in the decades after the Second World War because they were not married, concludes a recently-released report by a Senate committee that now calls for apology by the federal government.
Ottawa helped fund the maternity homes where women were sent to deliver their babies in relative secrecy.
One of those homes was in Saint John.
The new report calls what are decades of forced asoption a "shameful period in Canada's history, when human rights may have been violated and, grow their nuclear families," reads the report.
It calls on the federal government to issue a formal apology for what it characterizes as a "common practice" from 1945 to the 1970's that has been "shrouded in secrecy."
Valerie Andrews , director of non-profit group Origins Canada, testified in front of the Senate Committee that over 60 church-run and government-funded homes for unwed mothers were operated across the country.
"Having to register with a social service agency prior to admittance, mothers were put on the adoption track," Andrews Said. "These were quasi-incarceral settings where unmarried mothers were subjected to coercive psychological persuasion."
Andrews' work has detailed the link to New Brunswick.
A master's thesis she wrote last year shows early Salvation Army facilities were known as "rescue homes"
The Evangeline Home in Saint John (NB) was named after the daughter of William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, and not only cared for babies in their nurseries, but also facilitated adoptions directly from their premises.
The Evangeline was located on 260 Princess Street.
From 1960 to 1964, the total number of "illegitimate births" - language used in New Brunswick Department of Health to denote a child born out of wedlock - 3, 805, with unmarried mother adoptions recorded as 2, 316, or a surrender rate of 61 %, according to records Andrews unearthed at the provincial archives.
In the year 1968 alone in New Brunswick, adoption of illegitimate children represented 87 % of total adoptions.
Brunswick News has recently reported on several adoption stories involving the Saint John home since the provincial government proposed and then passed amendments last spring to the Family Services Act and the Vital Statistics Act to open adoption records.
The move provided an avenue to the unsealing of nearly 26,000 registered adoptipns that have been kept quiet for almost 100 years.
As of April this year, adult adoptees, birth parents and adult children of a deceased adoptee or birth parents are now able to apply for access to the information.
Marie crouse applied for the birth records of the daughter she put up for adoption when she was 15 years old.
While they have since been reconnected, Crouse wants to get her hands on the document she knows will show her signature forged by her mother signing away her parental rights at the Salvation Army's Evangeline Home.
Meanwhile, Saint Johner David Laskey didn't lern he had a long-lost brother until his mother was on her deathbed five years ago.
Laskey and his siblings lerned that their brother, also named David, was born in October 1946 at Evangeline. He was put up for adoption five days later.
The family has since applied for the adoption records
There is another Scoop that needs to be adknowledged, " Art Eggleton, the senator who chaired the committee, told reporters referencing the "Sixties Scoop," a 1960's government program that separated thousands of Indigenous children from their families.
While adoption policies fell under the jurisdiction of Canada's provinces and territories, the federal government provided them with social assistance grants, which were often used to address the needs of pregnant women.
Those funds "specifically contributed to the maintenance of maternity homes for unmarried mothers, the provision of adoption and counselling services and supporting the casework of social workers."
An estimated 95 % of women who gave birth at maternity homes gave their children up for adoption, according to the report.
Data from Statistics Canada shows that approximately 600,000 births from 1945 to 1971 were recorded as "Illegitimate"
The Senate report says that the practice of forcing unwed women to give up their babies for adoption was also common in the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand and Australia.
Australia's Senate conducted a study of the practice in its country that resulted in a national apology in 2013 by the then-prime minister.
Aside from a formal government apology from the Canadian government, the report recommends that the federal and provincial governments establish a fund to provide counselling for mothers and adoptees and for the country to implement a universal policy on access to adoption filesl.
"This unfortunate part of Canada's history needs to be addressed "Eggleton said "We cannot reverse the harms that have taken place, but we can provide support for those who were wronged."
All rights reserved Parent Finders NB and Irene Doyle ©2018