On August 6, 1974, Joan Vanstone got a call from a social worker named Honor Mowinckel of the then B. C. Ministry of Human Resources to advise that her background information was ready to be picked up.  Truth in adoption in Canada took a giant step forward that day.  The seed of Parent Finders had been planted. 

Joan was an adoptee who did not know she was adopted until age 16 but after that secret was finally disclosed, her adopting parents would not talk about the matter any further without a row and tears.  Initially, they said they knew nothing of her background, but upon further questioning, scraps of information gradually came out.   Although very happy in her adopted home, this isolation from her past would haunt Joan for many years.

    "In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are --- and where we have come from.  Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning, there is the most disquieting --- loneliness."
                                                                                        Alex Hailey
                                                                                            "Roots"

After giving birth to two sons and a daughter, the social and medical need to know became so compelling that Joan finally contacted the Children's Aid Society of Vancouver in April 1974 to ask if they had even one sentence about her past somewhere in their files.  It took four months for the CAS to find the file but at last she had a past and it was an incredible high to finally learn about her original birth background.  She went on to search for her birth parents, sadly finding both of them dead, but she did find a birth half-brother (now deceased) and a birth half-sister who lives in Springfield, Oregon. 

Honor Mowinckel sponsored a meeting of area social workers to have Joan and two other adoptees explain their feelings as adult adoptees in an effort to better educate adoption professionals.  After that meeting, the three adoptees decided to form a search and support group and the first official meeting was held in October of 1974 in Joan's living room.  The name PARENT FINDERS was chosen by the original 15 members to signify to adoptees in search that they could find help and understanding at Parent Finders.

Assistance was sought and generously given by Jean Paton of the Orphan Voyage group in the United States.  After an adoption article about Parent Finders was published in MacLean's magazine in the spring of 1975, Patricia Richardson of Toronto contacted Joan  and she promptly started the Parent Finders - Toronto group.  The word spread rapidly across Canada and the U. S., the phones started to ring and adoptees and birth parents came forward asking for help.

Given today's attitudes about the status of adoption, single parenting and even same-sex adoptions, it is hard to imagine how suppressed adoptees were 30 years ago.   Most calls from adoptees of that day were coming from adults, some over 50 or 60 years of age, who had never before discussed the subject of their adoptive status with anyone.  Parent Finders was their first ray of hope for relief from the crushing isolation of their secret.  Voices on the other end of the phone were initially soft, hesitant, and stilted as they struggled to express feelings and questions that had been suppressed for so long.  Today's new contacts are usually self-confident  voices that have grown up in a much more enlightened culture.  Parent Finders takes great pride in the role it has played in achieving openness and understanding in adoption reform in Canada.   Today there are 30 Parent Finders groups across Canada and 2 in the U. S. providing search and support services.  Joan is still at her desk managing the head office in Delta, B. C. as National Director and Registrar of the computerized Canadian Adoption Reunion Register data base which now contains over 57,000 records. 

Over the years many dedicated and generous volunteer adoptees and birth relatives have joined the open records movement in Canada in the best grass roots tradition.  Parent Finders groups have provided the services that should have been provided by the Social Services Ministries in the Provinces and Territories and have lobbied to have adoption information services made available to all members of the adoption community.  As our 25th Anniversary approaches in October of this year, all Provinces and Territories are now providing reunion search and support services, some better than others.  Parent Finders participated in establishing the open records legislation in B. C. in 1996 with 3 representatives on the Adoption Advisory and Consultative Committee.  All Parent Finders groups across Canada have pressured politicians and bureaucrats to provide improved adoption services, stressing the best interests of the child as mandated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child..  Parent Finders will continue to lead the way in adoption reform and co-operate with all groups working in adoption reform.    

All our members, past and present, can feel justly proud of a job well done.  Parent Finders is living proof of the power of truly motivated volunteers whose goal has always been to promote openness and understanding in adoption.  We look forward to the day when Parent Finders services will no longer be needed, and Governments will provide equal access to original birth records for adoptees and non-adoptees without discrimination of any kind.  Provincial and Territorial Governments must solve the problem by providing total access to adoption records for all adult adoptees and the birth parents of adult adoptees.  We would be pleased to see Parent Finders put out of business by enactment of Open Records legislation in all Provinces and Territories.