Earlier this year, he learned he was right. “When the nurse brought the baby in, I said, ‘I don’t think it’s my baby,’ but the nurse said babies change a lot overnight and I believed her,” Lush told CBC News in a recent interview. “Both had blue eyes. Both had slightly light blonde hair.” With nurses insisting the child was indeed her baby, Luce pushed aside her doubts and raised Arlene, the baby girl she brought home, but the question lingered. That was the hardest thing, not raising my baby.- Ruth Luce “I had this maternal intuition or instinct that would come up every now and then,” she said. “I mentioned it to Arlene several times and she wanted no part. [it].” Arlene Lush grew up in Triton, on the northeast coast of Newfoundland, with the Lushes’ five other children. She said there were signs she didn’t fit in with her siblings. “Growing up I was completely different from my brothers. I didn’t look like them. I definitely didn’t have the same attitude,” she said. They all finished school and went to university, while Arlene decided at 15 that she had had enough of school and went to work at her uncle’s fish plant and billiards. Ruth Lush, 73, sits in the kitchen of the Triton home where she raised her family. (Mark Quinn/CBC) Then, in January 2022, DNA testing done by a 53-year-old woman on the other side of the country sparked a series of revelations that would prove Ruth Lush right and learn that her biological daughter lived in the North West. lands.
“I wish it had never come to light”
Caroline Weir-Greene of Yellowknife grew up in Springdale, NL, believing she was the youngest of her mother’s nine children, but with questions about who her father was. Late last year she took a DNA test to try to get answers with the results showing that the woman she thought was her mother was actually not. The results connected her to a sister she didn’t know in Halifax and eventually to Ruth and Arlene Luce. A subsequent DNA test showed that the woman Weir-Greene thought was her mother was actually Arlene’s. For Ruth Lush, the truth triggered strong emotions. “I cried for days. What broke my heart was that I didn’t raise my own child, and that’s still very hard to come to terms with,” she said. “I had a child. I didn’t know her until she was 53. Can you imagine not knowing your baby? That was stolen from me. That was the hardest thing, not raising my baby.” Arlene Lush also found it difficult to accept. “I believe it, but it’s still hard to believe,” he said. “When I heard, I fell to the floor. I fell. I thought the world had ended. I have no one now. You know, the parents I had are not my parents and the parents who created me are not around anymore. So I thought I have no one.” Springdale Cottage Hospital closed in 1977. (Mark Quinn/CBC) Arlene said the first DNA test would never have been done if it was up to her. “I wish it had never come to light or if it did I wish I was dead when it happened,” she said. “It’s hard to think about all the what-ifs, and you can’t change it and you can’t stop thinking about it. People say, ‘It’s going to be OK, you’re going to get over it.’ It’s never going to be OK, ever. It’s fresh and it will always be fresh.” Arlene Lush, who now lives in British Columbia, drove back to Newfoundland this month to meet her biological siblings in Cow Head and Springdale and visit her adoptive parents. Sitting in the Triton home where she grew up, she said it was hard to return. “I wasn’t going to come here. I was going to stay in Springdale, but then I thought I should go see my dad and my mom. They’re my parents,” she said, fighting back tears. She says it’s been “surreal” to meet biological siblings who look like her, but she’s also deeply angry about what’s happening to her. Arlene Lush, 53, is pictured in Triton, where she was raised by a woman who did not give birth to her. (Patrick Butler/Radio-Canada) “I lived someone else’s life. Fifty-three years of my identity was taken away from me. I lost my identity. I understand that but I lost everything. I would know who my mom is, I would know who my dad was. I’m very angry, angry , sad, a mess. I’m crying a lot,” Lush said. Luce calls the family she grew up with “the originals” and says it was a normal family, but she wonders what her life would have been like if she had been raised by her biological family: five older siblings with a dad and four younger ones. with another father. The child switched with Arlene, Weir-Greene, was raised by an aunt. “Some of them were given up for adoption. Some were raised by family members. I think this family [the Lushes] it’s probably where I was best.”
Struggling with the truth
Weir-Greene wanted to know the truth, but she also struggles with the news. “It may have been decades ago, but I’m just finding out and my whole life has been a lie,” Weir-Greene said. “It wasn’t my choice and this was taken away from me and all I think about is what if? what if? Every day this has consumed me. Every minute. My sleep is interrupted. Every thought I have is about this.” Arlene and Ruth Lush look at family photos at Triton. (Mark Quinn/CBC) Weir-Greene and the Lushes want an apology and compensation. “I’m not going to stop until I get an apology. And I want more than an apology – if I need counseling or a family member needs it, then that should be provided. Compensation to cover our pain and suffering,” he said. Arlene Luce. Weir-Greene also says anyone born at Springdale Cottage Hospital, which closed in 1977, should be offered a free DNA test.
No apology from the health minister
This fall, the provincial Progressive Conservatives asked Health Secretary Tom Osborne what to do for families. Osborne did not apologize or offer compensation. “We said we share our sympathies with the families who have gone through this. It’s a very difficult situation for any of those people who have been through,” said Osborne, who said the government is looking at ways to ensure it doesn’t happen again. “This situation happened several decades ago,” he said. “This kind of thing should never have happened. It did. We can’t change that.” Caroline Weir-Greene met her biological mother, Ruth Lush, for the first time in 2022. (Submitted by Caroline Weir-Greene) For Ruth Lush this is not enough. “It might have been a long time for him, but it’s new for me. If he was in my position, I don’t think he would think like that. First they need to acknowledge that a mistake was made and apologize for it,” he said. Weir-Greene also wants more to be done. “It was big. I mean life-changing,” he said. “I lived someone else’s life. I lived a lie. I didn’t put up with it because we’re not being given any answers and we’re not being given any help.”
Not an isolated case
Ruth said she learned what happened to her family is not an isolated case. She said several other people in Triton have approached her with similar stories of children getting confused at the hospital. In 2019, the CBC reported on two other men, Craig Avery and Clarence Hines, who converted to Come by Chance Country Hospital in 1962. Months later the CBC also reported on another family who went home from the same hospital with the wrong child, but soon realized the mistake. Avery and Hines and their family members have filed a statement of claim in court seeking compensation from Newfoundland and Labrador for what happened to them. The CBC asked Osborne for an interview but was told he could not speak because the situation is before the courts. Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador
