“We both knew we were adopted. There were no secrets in our house,” explained former Townshipper Mike Johnston, referring to himself and his brother, Jeff. “There’s a special place in my heart for adoptive mothers,” he said, while recounting his decades-long search to discover the identity of his birth parents.
Until recently, Mike Johnston was a Bradford baby, with no trace of his arrival into this world beyond an ad in The Sherbrooke Record.
He was one of countless off-the-grid adoptions that took place out of a private maternity home opened in Sherbrooke by nurse Florence Bradford around 1915.
Bradford, an unwed mother herself, started the home to help support other women who were in the family way.
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Editor’s Note: This article is a follow up to an award-winning article written by Record reporter Kate Shingler in October of 2002.
