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<\/a><\/p>\nWho’s Your Daddy?<\/p>\n
March 8, 2012<\/p>\n
I wish someone could tell me. Let\u2019s talk paternity fraud, a term that didn\u2019t exist when I was born. One of my New Year\u2019s resolutions is to find my biological father. \u201cDoes he know I exist?\u201d I asked dear old Ma after she\u2019d blurted out on her death bed that my father, the only father I\u2019d ever known, was not my \u201creal\u201d father. Shocked naturally, I didn\u2019t believe her at first, but it explained so much! Why people often asked if I was adopted. Why I felt no kinship to my father\u2019s side of the family, the Daneliuks, or the \u201cDanefucks\u201d, as our schoolyard tormenters called us. Why I took my mother’s maiden name. It explained the bouts of estrangement between my sisters and I, my half-sisters. We\u2019d always been so different, what little common ground we shared divided in two. Why Grandma Daneliuk favored my sisters. She must have harboured suspicions. Why I always felt like a freak!<\/p>\n
I asked my *alleged father*. Equally shocked, he could provide no information, but sympathetic, took a DNA test at my request. The results excluded him, \u201cas the biological father of Heather Haley.\u201d First thing out of his mouth; \u201cI\u2019d never have married her if I\u2019d known.\u201d Thanks Dad. Poor Dad. By lying on my birth certificate, my mother had betrayed both of us. All of us, biological father deprived of any relationship with his daughter. I was stunned by my sister\u2019s reaction, intense sibling rivalry. \u201cHa! That means I\u2019m the oldest.\u201d Neither could she understand my dismay, or why I should care. I must always know the truth. Besides, I have a child and our health to consider. Ironic too, that fascinated by crime, intrigue and mystery, I wind up saddled with huge one, seemingly impossible to crack. I\u2019m running out of time with everyone, including me, getting older. I\u2019ve questioned my mother\u2019s surviving relatives, all claiming to know nothing, though I wasn\u2019t spared gossip. Apparently, Ma liked to have fun, often driving down from her home in Matap\u00e9dia, Quebec to the CFB base in Chatham, New Brunswick to attend parties. Maybe bio-dad was stationed there, serving in the Air Force. I\u2019d consult with a private investigator if I could afford to. Though I could go mad speculating, the writer in me can\u2019t help imagining. I\u2019ve developed a theory; she couldn\u2019t tell me, didn\u2019t know his name. Maybe it was a one-night stand. Maybe she was raped. She did describe such a scene to me once. Catholic, rural, Great Darkness<\/em>-Duplessis Orphans <\/a>era Quebec was not a good place to be knocked up. Ashamed, desperate to be married, her child legitimate, she lied. This is the real kicker; wed or not, knowing people would do the math, my grandmother tried to coerce her into an abortion.\u00a0 Sins are more sinful when the whole town knows.<\/p>\n