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A couple of years ago the Province of Quebec , which had hitherto kept all adoption records sealed opened them under certain conditions.
Long story short, I applied, and got some answers back within a few months, and it was a mix of good and bad news. My mother was long deceased (2008), and i was given her identity, and a modicum of background information. My birth father was still living and located, and happily he consented to having contact. I have been communicating with him weekly since then, and we have met, despite living in different countries, and Covid.
He could provide very little background on my birth mother as their relationship was long distance (He was a US air Force man from Maine , and she lived in Montreal, and they had had no contact since late 1964 before i came along.
Finding information on "Liz" who died in 2008 has been very difficult. What little we have been able to find indicates that after her relationship with my father ended (all involved believe that Liz' mother may have had much to do with the break up) she never married, and seems to have a had a very limited social life. She was an only child, and the records we have found indicate that she lived with her mother until her mother's death in 1993, and thereafter maintained residence in the same low income apartment. She has no internet footprint whatsoever.
It was much easier to find information on her parents, grandparents and their generation, but it has fallen to me to create her existence online.in the ancestry and FamilySearch and MyHeritage trees.
I have been able to obtain her birth certificate from a site called "Scotland's people" and her attestation of death (indicating only her name, city and date of passing) from the Ministere de l'Etat Civile " in Quebec we know where she lived at various times (always same address as her mother from electoral lists.
All this is fine and dandy, but we have no record of any workplace names post 1963, nor where she went to school, no photographs from yearbooks, and no clues as to anyone who may have known. her. I have even been in touch with one of her cousins who never even knew she existed, though he does remember being told he had been babysat by his "Auntie Pearl" (Lis' Mother) at one time.
I have put this out on Facebook while i was on it , and no one who may have known her came forward. I have reached out to people who lived in her building, and got no response.
We even found her mother's grave ( a simple marker with name and dates in the paupers' section of a Montreal cemetery.) but have no indication whatsoever of where Liz' remains may be located, or who handled her final arrangements. Etat Civile refused to provide the "Acte de deces" which would contain that information on the grounds that since I was legally adopted i have no legal claim to that document. Needless to say we have contacted every funeral home we could to find out who handled her remains, and to whom the remains were turned over. No one has any record of her. There was never an obituary published either. Also to complicate things further, apparently i have an older half brother out there.
As a "Hail Mary" i have have placed a "Memoriam" ad in the Montreal Gazette which is scheduled to be published May 7th 2022 (Mother's day weekend) which belatedly announces her death, and asks anyone who knew her to please come forward so i can "meet " her second hand.
Dies anyone here on this board have a similar story, and some ideas they can share about how to obtain some of these missing pieces and things they have done to locate friends and acquaintances?
Thank you in advance for any help you can offer.
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