Woman who lost baby to forced adoption urges Ottawa to apologize

Christine Nayler spent only four hours with her newborn daughter at a hospital north of Newmarket, Ontario, in 1982. Then, at 15, she was sent home without her child.

Decades later, Nayler has launched a petition asking the federal government to acknowledge its role in a system that coerced hundreds of thousands of unwed mothers into giving up their children for adoption in post-Second World War Canada. Her petition has garnered more than 600 signatures and was tabled in the House of Commons last week, giving the government 45 days to respond in writing.

"I want the government to acknowledge the harm that was done to us and the role that they played in it," Nayler said. "When your child is alive and she's just taken from you for no other reason than you're young and you weren't even given a chance to be a mother, like, that changes everything that you feel about the world."

An estimated 300,000 women were forced to give up their babies between the 1940s and 1970s. Federal and provincial governments, religious and medical institutions, and families worked together to systematically separate unmarried women from their babies. Liberal MP Karina Gould and Senator Chantal Petitclerc have joined the advocacy. Only two institutions — the Catholic archdiocese of Vancouver and the United Church of Canada — have issued formal apologies so far.

The government's Office of the Minister of Jobs and Families said it recognizes this was a systemic issue and that legal safeguards now exist to prevent such practices. But for thousands of mothers and their children, the word "recognize" falls short of what they're asking for.