Manitoba compensates 2 men switched at birth in 1955 with $250K each in settlement

Edward Ambrose holds up two picture frames. The pictures in his right hand are of his biological parents, whom he never got to meet. The picture in his left hand is a wedding photo of the parents who raised him. (Gary Solilak/CBC)Social SharingTwo men switched at birth in a rural hospital more than 70 years ago have been compensated $500,000 by the Manitoba government.

Edward Ambrose and Richard Beauvais were awarded $250,000 each in the 2025-26 fiscal year, according to financial disclosure documents released by the province this week.

"Mr. Ambrose and Mr. Beauvais are grateful to the provincial government for the public apology they received from Premier Kinew and for the resolution of their claims for financial compensation," Bill Gange, a lawyer representing both men, told CBC News in a statement.

Ambrose declined to comment when reached by phone Tuesday.

What happened to the two men was "a miscarriage of justice," provincial Justice Minister Matt Wiebe said in a written statement.

"No one can give them back the years that were lost but we hope the settlement brings some closure," he said in the statement.

The men were sent home with the wrong families in 1955 after being born at a hospital in Arborg, about 115 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

Ambrose is Métis but was raised by a Ukrainian family, and Richard Beauvais grew up believing he was of Cree and French descent when his ancestry was actually Ukrainian, Jewish and Polish.

Richard Beauvais, seen here with his wife, Sonja, grew up believing he was Métis. (Submitted by Richard Beauvais)They didn't learn the truth until Ambrose's sister took a 23 and Me DNA test that showed they weren't biologically related. The results did, however, suggest Beauvais was her sibling.

Beauvais was raised near Lake Manitoba in a Métis community. He is a residential school survivor who was removed from his home in the Sixties Scoop, a process that saw an estimated 20,000 First Nation, Inuit and Métis people taken from their families and placed with mostly white families.

Ambrose was raised on a farm in Rembrandt, about 25 kilometres north of Gimli.

"The grief of what we went through, that will always be there — you'll never walk away from that. But for now, I know who I am, and I know who my biological brothers and sisters are. So, it's a step forward to a positive," he told CBC News in 2024.

The two men wanted an apology and compensation. Gange requested both in April 2022.

The apology came in March 2024, about six months after the NDP government was elected in Manitoba and only a couple months after the health minister acknowledged the "devastating" impacts the men experienced.

As Ambrose endeavoured to connect with his biological family and cultural roots, Manitoba Métis Federation president David Chartrand personally handed Ambrose his MMF citizenship card 2½ years ago.

"He's welcomed back to his nation, and he shed tears in that perspective. And he's so pleased to be home," Chartrand told CBC by phone in Ottawa on Tuesday.

"Just imagine what Eddy and them are going through now to try to find their own cultures again and reflect their thoughts and saying, you know, 'This is what I thought I was, this is what I was supposed to have been. And yet I'm somebody else.'"

Ambrose, with Manitoba Métis Federation president David Chartrand, obtained his MMF citizenship card in 2024. (Manitoba Métis Federation)The MMF president said it was clear from his talks with Ambrose that money was not his primary concern, though Chartrand also feels it's fitting the men were financially compensated.

However, Chartrand questioned whether $250,000 was a fitting amount for what they went through.

"That's not a lot of money to be somebody else for [decades], and to have never seen your family, your mom and the rest of your family," he said.

"It's definitely a matter [that] clearly still will live with them forever. And the little time they have now, they want to spend as much as they can with the family they have left."

Bryce Hoye is a multi-platform journalist with a background in wildlife biology. He has worked for CBC Manitoba for over a decade with stints producing at CBC's Quirks & Quarks and Front Burner. He was a 2024-25 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. He is also Prairie rep for outCBC. He has won a national Radio Television Digital News Association award for a 2017 feature on the history of the fur trade, and a 2023 Prairie region award for an audio documentary about a Chinese-Canadian father passing down his love for hockey to the next generation of Asian Canadians.