When her mother passed away two years ago, Natalie Levesque and her sister Loralie started to dig into a family secret, looking for their long-lost brother. 

Loralie went to a medium soon after her mom, Caroline Waboose, passed where she was told that she has three siblings. “No, I only have two,” said Loralie, but the medium kept insisting that there were three. 

Naturally, Loralie got curious and began asking questions, looking for answers with Natalie. They found bits and pieces of the story through family members, Waboose’s friends and combing through their own memories. 

Waboose became pregnant at around the time she was 15-years-old in 1960, and was sent off to St. Mary’s Maternity Hospital for unwed mothers. She was there for two years before her child was taken away from her, according to Natalie.

It was a cousin of hers that divulged most of the information that Natalie has now. She also found out that Waboose’s baby boy was adopted to a family in B.C. around the Kelowna area. 

Natatlie and Loralie took a trip to Kelowna last year to find more information. They went to libraries looking for adoption papers, and they asked local communities for help. Unfortunately, there was very little paperwork that was found from St. Mary’s from that time. Loralie even took a DNA test, but didn’t find anything substantial out of it.  

Most of the information they have been able to find is through word of mouth and passed on through family and friends. But with many older family members aging and losing memory, it’s been harder to pull out more details than what they already know. 

In her search, Natalie has also been able to refresh childhood memories which hinted at this story. 

She remembers one year when she was around 12-years-old, they were visiting her cousins in Longlac, Ontario when one of her cousin’s aunts said to her, “you have an older brother;” to which Levesque said “no, I’m the oldest.” 

But she insisted, “you have an older brother and your mom gave him away.” 

Hearing this, Natalie confronted her mother, questioning her about what she was told. But Wasboose shut it down immediately. 

“Don’t you ever, ever repeat that again,” Natalie recalls her mother saying to her. This memory has always floated around her mind, simply because of how taboo it felt to bring it up and her mom’s intense reaction.

Despite this reluctance, Natalie thinks that perhaps later on in life, her mother did try to communicate with her what happened but didn’t know how. She believes there was some type of trauma that prevented her from sharing her experience. 

For many Indigenous women like Waboose, being torn away from their babies wasn’t uncommon. The Sixty Scoop was a practice in Canada that started in the 1960s when Indigenous children were taken or “scooped away” from their families. 

According to Department of Indian Affairs statistics, 11,132 Indigenous children were adopted between the years of 1960 and 1990. However, some experts believe that the number is much higher. Of these children, 70 per cent were adopted into non-Indigenous families. 

Unfortunately, the issue is not only something of the past. Canada’s census 2016 data shows that although Indigenous children only make up about 7 per cent of the child population in the country, an astounding 52 per cent of children in foster care are Indigenous. 

The sisters were also able to track down a lady who used to work at St. Mary, and she actually remembered their mother. Natalie said the lady told them that Waboose did in fact give birth to a boy and called him Jessie. 

“The name that we have is not his name, it’s the name that my mom would have given him,” says Natalie.

Recently, Natalie, who currently lives in Alberta, posted on a few different local Facebook groups in the South Okanagan area in hopes that someone with any knowledge will come forward to help her find her brother. 

“It would be like putting everything back together,” she says. 

Natalie was supposed to be a twin but her sister didn’t develop properly in the womb. She’s been told before that she’s always been searching for her twin in a way, searching for that energy. It’s a sentiment that Natalie herself relates to deeply and has channeled it now into finding her brother, wherever he may be. Finding him would make it whole, she says. 

If you have any information please email Natalie Levesque at [email protected]