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DNA home test helped 86-year-old woman find her birth family

Jean Fish was abandoned one or two days after she was born

She doesn’t know her birth date, but she has always celebrated on August 9. That is the day she was found.

Jean Fish was abandoned one or two days after she was born. Two children – Jean and Roy, both 11– playing nearby heard her cooing and mistook it for a kitten’s meow. They investigated and discovered a baby whose life and heritage before that moment remained a mystery for 86 years.

The mystery is being unravelled by Fish’s granddaughter, Victoria Bonney, on Bonney’s YouTube Channel (Part one and part two). She refers to her grandmother as her “hero,” and is inspired by her life, its mystery and her tenacity to search despite countless dead ends.

Fish was found in 1931 in Regina, Saskatchewan nearby the Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers. She was put into foster care for a year in the hopes her parents would come to claim her. Without any clues and when nobody came forward, foster care officials began searching for a home for her.

“They went door-to-door to ask if anyone could take her in,” said Sandra Bonney, Victoria’s mother and Fish’s granddaughter. The Great Depression made it difficult to find someone who could afford another mouth to feed. “An older couple with no kids agreed to take her in.”

Fish was officially adopted by the couple – Dan and Gertrude McRae – and was named Jean after one of the children who found her on the sidewalk.

The family moved to Collingwood in the 1950s. Fish and her husband worked at Peerless Textiles. Later, her husband worked at Collingwood Shipyards.

When Fish turned 21, her adopted mother died, and Fish started her search for information about the parents who left her on the sidewalk.

“She never gave up hope,” said Sandra. “She felt that somehow, somebody somewhere knew something.”

But it was dead end after dead end. The police records had been destroyed. The foster care and adoption papers had no information prior to the day she was found.

“We all grew up knowing the story,” said Sandra. “I and even Victoria did speeches in school. It was always part of our lives.”

Fish had no ill will to her birth parents. She just wanted to know, wanted to be able to fill out the family medical history portion of her medical charts.

“She always said they gave her life,” said Victoria.

Fish joined a group called Parent Finders. Her story was picked up by national news media, including newspapers in Saskatchewan. Finally, a breakthrough.

Jean and Roy found Fish once again. They saw her story and reached out.

“It first came as a shock when Roy called,” said Sandra.

Fish travelled to Saskatchewan with Roy and Jean. Roy took her to the spot where they found her. At that very moment, the old wooden sidewalk was being ripped up. Roy had a strong and lasting image from the day he found Fish and he pointed to the exact three boards where Jean Fish, the baby, had been placed.

Some adults keep the bonnet they wore home from the hospital as a newborn. Fish kept those boards.

Fish and her family developed a strong bond with Roy and Jean – they were the people who knew her the longest by a few moments. But Fish was still no closer to finding her birth parents. She didn’t know if she had siblings, and she would often search the faces of strangers wondering if she saw a resemblance or if it was her yearning that played tricks on her eyes.

For Fish’s 85th birthday, her grandkids got together to buy her a DNA test kit from Ancestry. For the most part, people take the test to discover the mix of races that make up their genetic background.

“We weren’t expecting to find anything else,” said Victoria.

But Ancestry keeps the results of the tests in a database and sends each test-taker a list of possible matches with guesses on the relationship. For example, a match would be identified as a likely first cousin, etc.

Fish’s test revealed three matches. Two more dead ends and one young woman with connections to Saskatchewan.

Through the test, they met Melissa, who turned out to be Fish’s great-niece. Melissa connected Victoria and Sandra to Faye, who is Fish’s sister. At 85 years old, Fish found her siblings and with them, everything she wanted to know about her parents.

It was Evelyn Kennedy who gave birth to Fish in a field. Likely, it was Allan Cross who left the baby on the sidewalk. The two married two days later. A wedding photo shows two young and guilty looking people, but perhaps that’s the story’s influence casting shadows on an old photograph. They raised Faye and three other children (Glenys, Dean and Mervin) in Saskatchewan.

Evelyn made a deathbed confession to her daughter Faye. She had another daughter she and Allan had given up, but Evelyn ordered Fay not to look for her.

When Evelyn died, Faye couldn’t go without searching any longer. She looked through adoption records - but of course the connection to Jean Fish couldn’t be made.

Faye did, however, find a brother named Mark. Mark was born in the Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers in 1930, a year before Jean Fish was found on the sidewalk nearby.

“Faye thought – because her mother had dementia – that she must have meant brother, not sister, and she stopped looking,” said Sandra.

Faye and Mark reunited nine years ago. They, along with their brother Mervin all united for the first time with Jean Fish in November 2017 in Saskatchewan for the first-ever Cross children reunion. Glenys and Dean had passed away before they could all meet.

Jean Fish and Mark met at the airport. Sandra has a photo of Mark leaning in close and Jean looking up at him with a smile.

“She told him, ‘I’ve never been kissed by a brother before,’” said Sandra.

The family convened at the house of a relative in Saskatchewan, and though they were strangers, they felt as though they came home to each other.

“Our family doubled in a day,” said Victoria.

Sandra said her mother, who lives in Collingwood still, is beyond happy to have found her birth family after 85 years of mystery.

“It’s hard to have regrets, she says, because you’d be giving up one to gain another,” said Sandra. “Faye struggles … with a sense of loss … she’s upset she didn’t search for her sister sooner. She’s upset about missed time.”

Victoria has compiled newspaper articles, news footage, letters and photos to tell the story of her grandma’s 85-year search for her birth family and told it in two videos on her channel.

She was struck by her grandmother’s will to keep going and the extent to which she searched. “She wrote anyone possible who might know something,” said Victoria, who has the responses her grandmother received. “It was sad seeing her encounter all the dead ends at such a young age. She probably felt so alone and lost.”

Sandra hopes the story will give hope to other adoptees who may have given up searching for answers.

“We’re all inspired by the story, and it’s never been presented in this complete way,” said Victoria. “I don’t know if I’m worthy to tell such a big story.”


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Erika Engel

About the Author: Erika Engel

Erika regularly covers all things news in Collingwood as a reporter and editor. She has 15 years of experience as a local journalist
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