Métis citizenship gives birth to new life – Winnipeg Free Press

WINNIPEG – A Manitoba man who changed after birth and grew up unaware of his heritage for more than 60 years says he feels a sense of belonging after receiving Métis citizenship.

“My identity is something I lost a long time ago,” Edward Ambrose said in a press release.

“I'm now 68 years old, so being welcomed into the Red River Métis family really touches my heart.”

Ambrose received his Manitoba Métis Federation citizenship card in Winnipeg on Tuesday. He was accompanied by his daughter Eileen and her biological sister Leona.

“I'm proud to be with my family and it feels very powerful and meaningful to receive my card,” said Ambrose.

“I will always love my other family too, but I feel like this is where I always belong.”

David Chartrand, president of the Manitoba Métis Federation, said the citizenship card won't change the status quo, but it will allow Ambrose to look forward to a future with his people.

“I think he's been reborn in a lot of ways,” Chartrand said.

“He was in tears here (Tuesday). He was shocked. For him, it's a sense of belonging again. He is absorbing it as much as he can. It will now be a part of our culture and people.”

Ambrose was born in 1955 at a hospital in Arborg, Interlake, on the same day as Richard Boveis. Babies were sent home with the wrong families.

They grew up, got married and had children of their own. For decades, they didn't know each other or the puzzle that brought the two people together.

Ambrose grew up in a Ukrainian family and said he has fond memories of growing up in Rembrandt, a farming community south of Arborg. Both his mother and father died when he was 12 years old. Ambrose mingled among his relatives and was later given to a foster family who adopted him.

Another man said Beauvais' father died when he was young and his mother struggled to raise him and his siblings in St. Laurent, a Metis community on the eastern shore of Lake Manitoba. He was sent to a residential day school, picked on because he was local, and was removed from his family and placed in foster homes.

He became a commercial fisherman and moved to British Columbia.

The truth that the two had been sent home to the wrong families was only revealed years ago through DNA collections from the home. It changed both men's lives as they tried to navigate their past and what it meant for their future.

Ambrose embarked on an exploration of his Metis identity.

Chartrand said that Ambrose had told him that “for most of his life he had been a Ukrainian.”

“He said, 'I've had a lot of perogies in my life, and now I eat a lot of bannock and fish and venison.'

Chartrand Ambrose has other benefits, including free prescription drugs and replacement glasses.

The leader said he hopes Ambrose gets more.

“One of the things I'm hoping for is for the province to compensate these two people for such a massive robbery of their culture,” he said.

— With files from The Canadian Press