It’s the perfect way for Rhona Beaumont to celebrate family Day when her birth family lands in Calgary from the United Kingdom.
“It’s a very emotional day for me,” says Beaumont. “I can’t wait to put my arms around them.”
Beaumont was given up for adoption over 50 years ago and reconnected with her biological family last summer when she returned to the U.K. for her adopted sister’s funeral.
She decided to look for her adoption papers and found them in her parents’ old desk.
Beaumont returned to Calgary, her home for the past 14 years, and used an ancestry website and Facebook to find her family.
She messaged an aunt who told her they had been waiting for her to contact them.
The adoption records were closed meaning they couldn’t get any information.
Beaumont’s birth mother, half-sister, aunt and niece are visiting Calgary for the first time.
“This is their first time in North America so they had to get passports and everything just for this occasion,” says Beaumont.
There were hugs and tears when Beaumont finally greeted her family at the Calgary International Airport.
“It’s difficult to put into words,” she says. “We all look the same. It’s incredible.”
“All your life you think of someone as a baby and then when you actually see them in reality they’re a grown up person,” says Sue Wincote, Beaumont’s birth mother.
Wincote always expected to meet the daughter she gave up for adoption.
“I knew that if she was like me that she would find me. It was going to happen and it did,” she says.
The two will spend some time catching up, looking at family photos and taking a few day trips.
“We’ve got a lot of trips planned,” says Beaumont. “We’re going to go to Banff and Lake Louise, go on a horse drawn sleigh and see the mountains and snow.”
In the short time they’ve been together they’ve discovered they both love to read and they have strong physical resemblance.
They also found out that before Beaumont moved to Canada she grew up about 35 kilometres away from Wincote.
Beaumont is overjoyed to finally get the chance to know her birth family and hopes her story inspires others to reach out to theirs.
