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For nearly seven decades, two Canadian men lived lives – full of pain, joy and love – meant for the other.

Richard Beauvais, 68, believed he was Indigenous. Eddy Ambrose, who shares the same birthday, always understood that he was of Ukrainian descent.

But that reality shattered four years ago when, after a series of DNA tests, they learned they had been mistakenly switched at birth.

On Thursday, Wab Kinew, the recently elected premier of Manitoba, will apologize to Beauvais and Ambrose in the province’s legislature, reversing a decision by the previous government to deny responsibility for the mix-up. The painful saga, which embodies the damaging effects of Canada’s colonial policies, also highlights the fragile nature of identity and the complex meaning of family.

“To have the core understanding of who you are – and who your parents were and who your siblings were – taken away from you, is a shattering experience,” said Bill Gange, the Winnipeg-based lawyer who represents both men. “But this apology is also for the siblings who didn’t grow up with the brother they should have, for the parents that never knew their own child. I don’t think either man knows what it will fully mean for them down the line, but hopefully it will help them.”

Since the shocking revelation of their true identities, the two men have traced the fateful 1955 mix-up to the Arborg medical nursing unit, then a newly opened rural hospital in southern Manitoba where staff gave families the wrong baby.

Ambrose, born to a Cree mother and French father, would spend his youth in the farming community of Rembrandt, oblivious to his Métis roots. The parents who raised him taught him Ukrainian folk songs. They died when he was young and in the years that followed, he was cared for by other family members until he was placed in foster care with a family he came to love immensely.

Eddy Ambrose leafs through a photo album featuring pictures of his biological mother and aunt, neither of whom he knew. Photograph: Nasuna Stuart-Ulin/New York Times/Redux/eyevine

Nearly 60 miles away, Beauvais has a markedly different experience – one that reflected the pernicious nature of Canada’s attempts to break Indigenous families and culture.

Unaware of his Slavic roots, he grew up in a Métis community on the eastern shore of Lake Manitoba speaking French and Cree. His father, Camille, died when he was three years old. His mother, Laurette, struggled to raise Richard and six other children.

Beauvais recalls foraging in the dump to feed siblings. He was barred from speaking Cree and French when attending a residential day school. When he was around eight or nine, he became one of the thousands of victims of an episode which became known as the “Sixties Scoop”, in which the government forcibly removed thousands of Indigenous children from their families and placed them in the foster system. Officials entered the family’s house, striking Beauvais’s sister when she could not stop crying, and then herded the children into a car.

“I saw what the government did to Indian kids because they thought I was an Indian kid,” Beauvais told the Globe and Mail, which first reported the story. He was teased in his youth for being Indigenous. “Not many white people have seen what I’ve seen. It was brutal and it was mean.”

But he was eventually adopted into a family that he came to love immensely.

“Richard doesn’t define himself by what he experienced,” said Gange. “He thinks of himself as someone so fortunate as to have felt the love and goodness of having a family that, while they didn’t need to take on a foster kid, raised him as their own.”

Beauvais eventually moved to British Columbia, where he works as a commercial fisherman.

In 2020, he took a DNA test – a Christmas gift from his daughter – to learn more about his father’s French heritage. Instead, the test suggested he had Ukrainian and Polish ancestry. “He thought it was a scam, one that didn’t even acknowledge his Indigenous roots,” said Gange.

Beauvais, who proudly believed he ran the only fully Indigenous fishing crew in the region, stuffed the test in a drawer.

But in the months that followed, different tests taken by different people across the country eventually revealed that the two men were switched at birth and lived out someone else’s life.

An old photograph of James and Kathleen Ambrose, who raised Eddy Ambrose, hangs in his home in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Photograph: Nasuna Stuart-Ulin/New York Times/Redux/eyevine

The case marks the third known such mistake in the province of Manitoba. Gange has represented two other sets of men from northern First Nations communities who were also switched at the federally run Norway House Indian hospital in 1975.

Gange raised the case of Ambrose and Beauvois to Manitoba’s health minister in April 2022 , the government refused to comment.

“It was just total silence from them,” he said.

It wasn’t until the Globe and Mail was set to reveal the story in February 2023 that the government acknowledged the mix-up, but denied any responsibility.

“I told the men there was no point banging your head against a brick wall – this government wasn’t going to acknowledge what had happened,” said Gange.

When the leftwing New Democratic party won the recent election, and Kinew became Canada’s first ever First Nations provincial premier, Gange tried again, and was this time told the government would apologize for the mistake.

In the years since learning about their newfound identities, both men have experienced the expansion of their families. Beauvais’s eldest daughter has grown close to her father’s biological sister. Ambrose and his daughter have since been made members of Manitoba Métis Federation, the beginning of a long journey to reconnect with a culture and family he never knew.

“I will always love my other family too, but I feel like this is where I belong – where I have always belonged,” he told the Canadian Press after receiving his citizenship card.

Gange, who is meeting with provincial officials this week to try to work out a settlement agreement, suspects far more cases exist in the country – and that further revelations will continue to be revealed as home DNA tests become more and more common.

“None of this would have happened and nobody would have known if they hadn’t taken tests. The challenges they faced in the child welfare system, especially Richard, are problematic,” said Gange. “But the redemption of both men, who ended up with beautiful foster families who loved them so much, is also a powerful testament to what family can mean.”

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