{"id":259082,"date":"2021-12-17T14:48:37","date_gmt":"2021-12-17T20:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=259082"},"modified":"2021-12-16T18:24:12","modified_gmt":"2021-12-17T00:24:12","slug":"sisters-separated-adoption-find-decades-apart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/sisters-separated-adoption-find-decades-apart\/","title":{"rendered":"Two sisters separated by adoption find each other after decades apart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Two sisters separated for over three-quarters of a century had an emotional reunion after finding each other online through a genealogy site.<\/p>\n

Bea Belair grew up in Brantford, Ontario in a family struggling with poverty. She had to help raise her brothers and sisters, of which there were many. With 11 children total, her parents couldn’t afford to raise them all \u2014 which is why two of the children, including younger sister Margaret Otter, were placed for adoption. “We were so poor, like really poor,” Belair told CTV News Toronto<\/a>. “They just couldn’t afford to have two more, so that’s why they let the two girls go.”<\/p>\n

For Otter’s part, she grew up knowing she had been adopted. But she wondered about the family she had come from. “I always knew that someday I’d try to find them,” she told CTV News Toronto. “But I lost interest around the age of 13 when I discovered boys. That just took me in a whole different direction.”<\/p>\n

Belair said the siblings tried to find their missing sisters for years but were never successful. Six of the siblings passed away before any reunion was able to happen. And on Otter’s part, she didn’t even know if they would welcome her. “‘Could I ever meet them? Would I ever meet them?'” she recalled. “And then I thought ‘would they want to meet me?'”<\/p>\n

But last year, Otter’s son found an uncle living in California, and this finally helped her connect to her long-lost big sister. “I thought no no no, it’s probably a scam,” Otter said. “But then too many of the pieces of the puzzle started to fit together.”<\/p>\n