These 41-Year-Old Men Just Found Out They Were Switched at Birth
Always suspicious that something wasn't quite right, two men from just outside Winnipeg, Manitoba have finally discovered that they were switched at birth.
In an extremely emotional news conference on Friday, best friends Leon Swanson and David Tait Jr., both 41, publicly announced their shocking DNA discovery to the media, saying they were "distraught, confused, and angry" over how this could have possibly happened.
"We don't have words," Tait said, according to CBC News. "Forty years gone."
Swanson was born on January 31, 1975 and Tait just a few days later on February 3, 1975 at the Norway House Indian Hospital in Norway House Cree Nation. At the time, it had been run by the federal government. This is already the second case of infants being switched at birth from the hospital in 1975.
"What happened here is lives were stolen," Eric Robinson, former NDP member of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly for Keewatinook, said, according to CBC News. "I can't describe this matter as anything less than criminal. We can live with one mistake, but two mistakes of a similar nature is not acceptable, so we can't simply slough it off as being a mistake, indeed it was a criminal activity in my view."
Both Tait and Swanson want answers as to how this could have happened, and how Charlotte Mason, Tait's biological mother, and Francis Tait, Swanson's biological mother, ended up taking home the wrong children - and the government is hoping to be able to give them closure. In a statement on Friday, Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott said that they would launching a third-party investigation to make sure there weren't other cases of infants being switched at birth from this time period.
"The results of this review will be made public," she said. "Cases like this are an unfortunate reminder to Canadians of how urgent the need is to provide all Indigenous people with high-quality health care."
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