Mixed Emotions

Today I find myself happy, sad and excited all at once and for a variety of reasons.

Happy, because I finished my travelling piece of needlework:

The Spooks Are Out! Copyright © Waxing Moon Designs

Stitched on 32-count Natural Belfast Linen with recommended DMC threads

I started this piece back when we were camping this summer. The picture is a bit wavy because I really need to iron it! :-) I think I'll make this into a tuck-away pillow and hang it in my front entry-way to greet visitors as we approach Samhain.

I'm feeling excited because after many months of working, asking, begging, pleading, being annoying and so on, DS#2's school is finally going to get additional landscaping at the front of the school. It's taken months of work, but it looks now like it will happen. It's going to mean spending this coming weekend shoveling dirt to get the planting beds ready, but I'm willing to spend the time. Better news is that the school itself is willing to pay for the dirt, so it won't come out of the limited budget the parent volunteers have. Yipee!

The only downer to my week has been the newly invoked and equally newly revoked adoption record laws in Ontario. I'm an adoptee, so this affects me personally. Since around 1927 (but my dates could be totally wrong here, so don't quote me on that!) adoption records in Ontario have been sealed - meaning neither Adoptees nor Birth Parents could access anything but the most generic information about each other. For instance, I could find out that my birthmother was a nurse and was 23 when she had me, but little else.

Sometime in the 70s or 80s (again, I'm not sure of dates here), the government established the Adoption Disclosure Registry. Adoptees and Birth Parents could register in a passive registry, meaning that if an adoptee registers and his/her birth parent registers, then they would be matched up and could meet and find out about each other. Additionally one could request a search for birth family or adoptees. I registered for a search in 1993. At that time, searches took between 7 and 10 years (yes, that's years folks) to commence. I was contacted in 2000 to indicate that my search was about to begin. It was completed in 2001 with the location of my birthmother. This would be great, except for the fact that my birthmother passed away in 1999.

In 2005 the Ontario government finally passed a law that would open Adoption records for adoptees and birth parents. It would allow adoptees to access their original birth certificates and birth parents to access their child's amended birth certificate. Identifying information all around. This is good. The law came into affect Sept. 17. More good.

Sept. 19th a judge heard a challenge to the new law and struck it down. This challenge was brought about by 4 people - 3 adoptees and one birth parent. 4 people out of the thousands of adoptees and birth parents in Ontario. They felt the law violated their constituitional rights and freedoms.

An appeal is being launched and I imagine this will eventually end up in the Supreme Court of Canada, but I am left feeling unspeakably sad that yet again I am denied that most basic of information - my name and the name of the people who created me. I am one of the lucky few who does actually know this information already, but I would still like to have my original birth certificate. It's not fair to all those who haven't been so lucky to date.

I hope this law will come back into affect and soon. All adoptees and birth parents in Ontario have been denied this information for far too long.

If you're interested, you can read more about the judgement here.