by Peter Macnaughton
If you have never accepted various forms of spirituality, telepathy, shamanism or the supernatural, your beliefs would be sorely tried upon hearing Eric’s tale about discovering his Finnish roots, presented to the Canadian Nordic Society on January 20th.
In childhood, Eric was never referred to as having been born; “he arrived” into his adopting parent’s lives. Various childhood incidents where his lack of knowledge of his background affected him dramatically and convinced him that his children should know fully their ancestry; this led him into a long search to find his roots, a “Mission Impossible” endeavour.
Eric recounted dreams and voices telling him to start and continue, years of searching into employment records looking for a woman who disappeared for the year in which he was born, borrowing a copy of every telephone book in For Ontario to search for a particular name. Some contacts were serendipitous – once he contacted a company that had taken over another company, on the day the retired president of the first one had returned, to have this retired person provide him an important link forward into his past. One day he had a very strong vision about his quest, to find out later his birth mother, driving in California some 4500 km away, had to pull over to the side of the highway having the same vision at the identical moment.
Little voices directed his quest – one such voice told him to “Write Helen now”; while step-sister Helen never received the letter, one of her brothers picked up a last delivery of mail for Helen (who had just moved out of the country) and eventually contacted Eric.
Eric eventually succeeded in locating his birth mother Doris, and visiting her, along the way helping her to publish her memoirs. He eventually was able to trace his Finnish ancestry from his biological mother back into the 17th century. (circa 1650). Eric has followed a path of self-sufficiency that paralleled his relatives living back in Finland, and figures that he has been directed by instincts that have been passed down genetically.