"I think adoption is a deeply emotional connection,"
says Terry Goertzen. His own "slightly unusual adoption
story," as he calls it, goes back to when he was 21 and
planning to marry. As he marked this important milestone, he also
went through a legal process to be formally adopted, as an adult,
by Anne Loewen, the woman who had raised him since he was
eight.
Terry came into care in 1972, when his birth mother left the
family. Anne was the social worker assigned to his case, and after
her first encounter with Terry, she went back to her office at the
Children's Aid Society and told her colleagues, "I just
met this little boy, and one day I will take him home."
"Some years later I became her foster child," Terry
relates. "Then in 1985, when I was about to get married, I
thought I would like to recognize the woman who had been my mother
since I was eight years old, as my social worker and foster mother
and then adoptive parent.
