Times Review Staff
Imagine being taken away from your parents as a toddler. Then imagine that 35 years later you are reunited with a family you didn't know you had. Joe Daniels knows first-hand what that feels like, and if Joe wasn't a believer in fate prior to Sept. 18, 1994, then he is now.
That's the date that he received a phone call that changed his life.
He had received an urgent message to call his foster brother in Trail. He called, and the voice at the other end of the line sounded like his natural brother Dennis, Joe said, adding that Dennis was the only member of his natural family with whom he had been able to keep in touch.
"This is your brother D'Arcy," the voice said.
Joe replied that he didn't have a brother named D'Arcy. But after a moment of silence what he heard changed his life. "Yes, you do," the voice said.
Then another voice came on the phone - a woman's voice. It was his older sister Elaine, and Joe had no idea she even existed. The shock left him at a loss for words.
It was then that Joe came to the end of an exhaustive search which had spanned 35 years. Although he believed he had at least one unknown brother, and he suspected at least one sister, he was astounded to find out he was one of eleven brothers and sisters. "I knew I had missing brothers and possibly sisters, but I didn't know I had that many."
Joe was three years old when he and his younger brother Dennis contracted tuberculosis and were "removed for their own good" by social services. They were placed in a sanitorium and the disease allowed to run its course. Afterwards, instead of being reunited with their natural parents, they were placed in foster homes, and that's when Joe lost track of his entire family except for his brother Dennis.
From the point he left the sanitorium until he joined the Canadian military at age 16, Joe had lived with 11 separate families. As he jumped from one family to the next, Daniels could think of nothing but finding his natural family. However, he was told by social services that he could not initiate a search until he was 18. So, just after his 18thbirthday, Joe began his search.
"I tried adoption agencies, social services, lost parents search groups, but no one could help," said Joe, "I ran into the regular red tape and it was one dead end after another."
It was sheer luck he found them at all. Joe's brother D'Arcy and sister Elaine were returning to Yellowknife when their car broke down in Trail, and they spent two days there while the car was repaired. It was then that Joe's foster brother Phil (who lives in Trail) briefly saw someone on the street who was a spitting image of Joe. But Phil simply thought it was a strange coincidence, and Daniels' miraculous reunion might not have been, if D'Arcy and Elaine had not had further car problems.
The two were once again forced to have the car repaired in Trail.
"Phil ran into D'Arcy and played 20 questions with him," laughs Joe. Phil took them home and showed them pictures, and though D'Arcy initially had doubts, "Elaine was positive that I was one of the missing family members," said Joe.
The clincher was another call Joe received from his older brother Dave of Brampton, Ontario. they recalled stories of the yellow backhoe that their father had. "The way he described it took every doubt out of my mind," Joe said.