Searching for mom
David Rodenhiser, The Daily News
May 13, 2001

Should adopted children have the right to know their birth parents? The government says no.

How many of us speak to our mothers every day? Not many. Not me. But Mike Slayter does. Maybe that's because Slayter, 46, and his mom are making up for lost time. You see, they only met eight years ago. And if the provincial government and its bureaucracy had had their way, they never would have met at all.

Slayter's mom put him and his twin sister Wendy up for adoption shortly after their birth. Although successive governments over the past decade have repeatedly tinkered with Nova Scotia's adoption-information law, adoptees like Slayter - even after reaching adulthood - still have no guaranteed right to know the names of their birth parents. And conversely, his mom had no guarantee of ever being able to know what happened to her twins.

What a sad Mother's Day this would have been for both of them, had Slayter taken "No" for an answer.

Growing up in Halifax and later England as the children of Dr. John and Jean Slayter, young Michael and Wendy wanted for nothing, especially love. The twins always knew they were adopted, and though the topic was rarely discussed, it was seldom far from Mike's mind.

"I'd always had this fantasy, as most adopted children do, as to what my birth mother looked like," Slayter recalls.

Like many adoptees, he felt a "void" regarding his identity.

"It's the age-old question and it's the most profound question anyone has of themselves: `Who am I?'"

Slayter started searching for his birth mother in 1987. His adoptive parents had died a few years earlier. Naively, he began by phoning the province's adoption services administrators and asking for his birth mom's phone number.

"They just laughed," he says. That wasn't something Nova Scotia law permitted him to know.

So, Slayter embarked on a personal crusade against the Community Services Department, and at the same time started doing his own amateur detective work. His big break came when he recalled a conversation he and Wendy had had with their adoptive mom when they were six or seven years old. Telling them their father had named them, their mom added cryptically: "I kind of liked Derek and Diane."

The twins didn't realize it then, but those were their given names at birth. Thirty years later, that conversation would be the key clue that would help Slayter finally learn what the government didn't want him to know: his original name was Derek John Seaman, his mother's name was Marie, and she lived in Springhill.

Bursting with excitement, he phoned her on Sept. 19, 1992.

"She knew my voice right off. She knew it was me."

After seven months of phone calls, Slayter drove to Springhill in April 1993.

"I said `I'm sorry I had to come and do this rather unannounced. I hope you don't mind. I just couldn't wait any longer.' And before I'd finished, her arms were outstretched, tears were pouring out of her eyes, and she came over and just hugged me very tightly and didn't want to let go. It was such a release, and such closure for both of us ...

"My face ached for days after, I was smiling so hard all the way home."

It's that feeling that keeps Slayter fighting the government to open up access to adoption information. He wants others who are searching for their parents to be able to feel that "primordial connection."

"I really don't think the words exist," he says of those reunion emotions. "It's just like this whole textbook of adjectives of euphoria."

Wendy, who now lives in Spain, later had a happy reunion with Marie, as well.

Although legislation to open up adoption information was among Premier John Hamm's book of campaign promises, his government withdrew its proposed amendments last fall following emotional arguments that the new rules would lead to painful, unwelcome reunions. Slayter contends studies have shown more than 90 per cent of reunions are successful.

Moreover, he says, knowing one's heritage should be an inalienable right. It does seem absurd that while federal and provincial freedom-of-information laws assure Canadians access to almost any document that pertains to them - including covertly collected Canadian Security Intelligence Service files - adoptees in Nova Scotia are forbidden to see their own birth certificates.

The Hamm government's proposed amendments are now being reviewed by yet another committee, and Slayter fears no good will come of it. But Paula Altenburg, chairwoman of the review committee, says her group will give the issue careful consideration, even if it means missing the government's July target.

"It's a very sensitive issue and there's an awful lot of information to go through," she says. "It's going to make a big difference in some people's lives."

Slayter's mom hopes the committee recommends better access, so that more women who gave children up for adoption can know her joy.

"It changed my outlook on life," Marie, 74, says. "I'm much happier than I was."

Marie had always felt the same void as Slayter. Years before he began his search for her, she had learned his new name and address. Many times she had picked up the phone, but been afraid to dial. She'd even travelled to Halifax, but balked at knocking on his door. She didn't feel it was her right.

So, when he walked into her kitchen eight years ago, the emotion was "indescribable," she says. "It was one of the happiest moments of my life."

"He's a wonderful boy. He's not a boy, I know, but he's a boy to me," Marie laughs. "I think he's very talented, he's a gentleman and I don't know that a mother could ask for anything more."

Happy Mother’s Day.

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