INSIDE DOUGLAS COLLEGE / MAY 16, 1989

 

 

 

Douglas College Student

 

Adopted Woman Tracks
Down Her Natural Parents

It will be a family reunion
like no other.

At age 36, Douglas College
student Ingrid Bryce will soon
be visited by her parents. What
sounds like a fairly common
event has far greater meaning to
Bryce - she hasn’t seen her
parents since she was a baby,
when she was given up for adop-
tion.

Bryce is studying political
science and English in her
fourth semester at Douglas Col-
lege. She shakes her head as she
talks about how difficult it is
describing what it’s like being
36 and just discovering her
natural parents and siblings.

Much of her personal history
is a mystery. The rest is vague
memories of what she believes
she was told during her
childhood. But these images of
her childhood in Thunder Bay,
Ontario are slowly becoming
clearer.

“T think I was about 10
months old when I started living
with my adoptive parents,” she
says, explaining her new mom
and dad were friends of her
natural parents. She was legally
adopted at age four.

But tragedy struck twice.
Bryce was only nine when her

 

adoptive father died. And her
adoptive mother died when
Bryce was 13. She was on her
own, living in a boarding
school. During her teenage
years and into her adulthood,
Bryce primarly spent her ener-
gies on survival. But she
continued to look for something
to fill the void created by being
without a family, without a per-
sonal history.

“T needed to know my roots,”
Bryce says. “I was starting to
really wonder about my medical
history.”

She agrees there was some
link to her desire to find her
natural parents and the fact her
adoptive parents were no longer
alive. “I think it was more im-

 

 

portant to me because they
(adoptive parents) are dead. But
I still think I would have done it
anyway.”

After years of considering the
consequences, Bryce decided to
try to locate her natural parents.
“T didn’t do it until I was ready
for any answer. I had to be
ready for a possible rejection,”
she recalls.

The circumstances around her
adoption had been kept secret,
but she did have some informa-
tion. “I knew my birth name and
I knew I was from Southern On-
tario,” she says.

Her parents have an unusual
German surname, and she used

continued on page 8

Lend us Your Memories

You can make a difference to Douglas College’s 20th Anniversary
Celebration by lending us your memories.

As part of the 1989-1990 celebration, the Public Information Of-
fice is putting together a historical perspective of Douglas College’s

“20 Years of Making a Difference.”

To help fill in the pages of the past, we are looking for old
photographs and memories dating from 1970 to present.

If you have any memorabilia or story ideas, please contact Susan
Fast, Theresa McManus or Jeff McKeil in the Public Information Of-

fice, Room 4840, local 4805.

 

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