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It looks like that was the old entrance, maybe.

That was the entrance, yeah. We're in Come by Chance. It's the old cottage hospital where I was born and sent home with the wrong parents way back in 1962.

Have you been back here since you found out?

No, this is the first time.

What does this place mean to you?

Well, this is where my life got changed forever. My mother came in to have me as a child, and they sent me home with the wrong parents. This is where I came in to be in Hines and went out and became an Avery.

In December 1962, Rita Hines and Mildred Avery ended up here and come by chance hospital in labor on the same day. We don't know whether they ever met or chatted across the delivery room. Rita gave birth in the middle of the night, and Mildred, about 6 hours later. Then, the lives of these two strangers crossed in a way they could never have imagined. Rita was given Mildred's baby, who she raised as her oldest son, Clarence. And Mildred raised Rita's child as her seventh son, Craig.

It's changed my life forever to start it in this building. It'll always be hard Reaching and gut-reaching. But to stand there now where it all started, it's bring back a lot of heartache.

Since Craig and Clarence found out about their heartbreaking, life-changing switch at this hospital, their story has started to get out, and they have discovered they were not the only ones. It happened here before. I'm Luke Quintin, and from CBC, this has Come By Chance. Episode 5, A Close Call.

I'm Muriel Stringer. I was born and raised here, and I just called. Got married when I was 17. I had a daughter. It seems like she's almost as old as I am.

Muriel is now in her 80s. We're sitting in her home with her two daughters. Muriel is in a comfortable chair, and we had to roll her oxygen tank into the hall. Tuck it behind the door to make it quieter. And so you were living in Hodge's Cove here?

Yeah, and I brought up six children in this house.

One of those children was literally born in this house.In that room?Yeah.

I had a lot of experiences having children.

We're here to talk about one of those experiences. It's the summer of 1962, just four months before Craig and Clarence were born. Muriel is 19, and she and her husband are expecting their second child. When the time comes, they call a neighbor who offers to drive them. It's a good two hours to the closest hospital can come by chance along a winding road full of potholes. When they eventually arrive, Muriel's mother and husband drop her off, and she goes in alone. Muriel's taken upstairs to the ward, and she doesn't labor long.

He was born that night. He was a big baby. He was nine and a half pounds.

Muriel's baby was tagged Stringer with a B for boy. Baby boy Stringer.

He had a head of black hair. And you know, he had something on the back of his head, lumped on the back of his head.

It's not a big deal, just something Muriel notices before the baby is taken to be checked and weighed, and then taken to the nursery with the baby's sleep. A few days later, Muriel is in the car on the way home with her mother and the baby.

Me and mom were in the back, and that's when I noticed. I said to mom, mommy, don't look like my baby.

Something about the nose, maybe.

Mom said, No, unless He looks different to you because he got the little bonnet and sweater and everything on.

Muriel remembers the other thing about her baby she had noticed.

Something on the back of his head. When I put my hand back on the baby's head, it was gone.

But her mother's words reassure her.

If mom said he was my baby, he was my baby.

After hours, they arrive home to Hodge's Cove exhausted in the summer heat.

And mom took a little sweater off. His arm was bare with the little band on it. Mom I've never seen the band.

A tiny plastic wristband with a name.

This is Baby boy Adams. She said, It's not your baby. Well, I went nuts. How are we going to get him back? I was pregnant. If I was ever going to see my baby, it was frightening, really, right? There was no phones down there. Everybody didn't have phones around there at then. Only Minister in the post office.

Her husband, Cecil, is angry. He runs to the post office phone and calls the head nurse at the hospital.

So we told him what happened. He said, We brought home the wrong baby. She said, Didn't her mother know her own child? She went and checked it. She came back and she told me his baby boy, Stranger, is still in his crib.

While Muriel waits anxiously at home, her mother and Cecil make their way back to come by chance, carrying a stranger's baby. The other mother of baby boy Adams, who was only just given birth, has also realized the terrible mistake.

She was up there, front of death, waiting for her baby. I was there, looked next to the window there, watching until they got back. Oh, yes, I was waiting for them.

Eventually, the car pulls up outside.

And when I seen my baby, I knew it was him. I knew him when I seen him because they were different. They're little Adam's boy, he was a small little thing. That little boy never had that much hair on his head. And I had this big baby.

Despite the nurse's dismissive response on the phone, Muriel does know her own child, and now they are reunited. She names him Kent. Baby boy Adams is safely returned to his mother. So what happened here? What happened that led to at least two sets of babies being switched to birth at the same hospital in the space of just a few months? Wow. Muriel pulls something out which might cast some light on all this. Mom, that's amazing that dad haven't faded.

Well, it's in the things drawer, right?

It's a soft plastic hospital name tag.

I had it in a drawer all the time.

Oh, my gosh. It's tiny. It's like the size of a grape. It's like the hole in the center. It just barely fits over your ring finger. And this one says Baby. That's a G, right?

Baby Girl.

Stringer. Yeah. Wow. This tiny wristband had been on the arm of Muriel's next child born at Come by Chance, Norma. This was the baby right after...

The next baby I had there. Yeah.

Then she tells me something incredible.

That slipped off Norma's arm.

The one you're holding there, it slipped off.

Yeah.

So you noticed it had fallen off while she was in the nursery? Yeah.

Wow. I made sure I wasn't going to take home another wrong baby, right? So I'd be I don't have chicken. And sure enough, one time it was off. And I'm telling you, I wasn't very nice with nurses when I get in there and put that back on her arm. And then I spoke about how that happened to me once, and I don't want it to happen again.

It's almost unbelievable to think that not only had Craig and Clarence been switched to come by chance, but just a few Two months earlier, there had been a clear warning to the hospital that this was a possibility. And you have to wonder how many other cases there might be out there. For Muriel and Cecil Stringer, it was a tragedy that was blessedly averted.

When I look back, I count my blessings. I got kent back, thank Lord. Got kent back. I don't know what I've done if I didn't get my own baby back.

Come by Chance Hospital closed in 1986. And since we first started making the series, we've been reaching out to former staff to try and find out more about what could possibly have happened there. And so far, those we have managed to reach have not been wanting to talk to us. Even the people who've been switched and their families have had trouble getting answers. But Craig Avery did manage to speak to one nurse about what it was like in Come by Chance when she was there.

She told me that times you would see two or three babies' tags on the floor come off their legs. Tags just slide off. When they took us out, who knows? Tags might have come off our feet like they did with other babies, and now, which one's which?

Don't say hello. I'm Rosanne Deerchild, host of Unreserved, a fearless space for Indigenous voices. Together, we learn and unlear, laugh, and become gentler in all our relations. We're located in what is now called Canada, but we talk about what came before it and what comes next. We're also celebrating our 10th season this year. Wow, ever far. It's a great time to join the circle. Find Unreserved every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Every Newfoundlander knows Come by chance. The town itself is just a few houses, but you can see the black pipes of the oil refinery, which dominates the skyline from miles away. It's a beautiful, warm day. The sun is splitting the rocks as I drive through the gauntlet of the oil refinery past a huge pile of yellow sulfur. Turning the corner, it's a surprise to see a charming little harbor with green hills across the water in the distance. I'm here because I finally did hear back from someone who used to work at Come By Chance College Hospital in the 1960s.

We met on his small sailboat. I'll be 82 in five days, so I mean, if I can get a border, you should be able to. Absolutely. We can grab this one right here. Lou Baker. Lou Ellen, that's my full name. The College Hospital system was a British system.

Come by Chance was one of a number of Codge hospitals built after the Depression when Newfoundland was still part of the British Empire.

Before Codge Hospitals, some people relied on hospital ships that circulated the island. In 36, they built a hospital in there. Taurus amputations, tonsillectomies, colosycectomies, nephrectomies, and looked after so many people and saved so many people's lives.

In 1964, just after Craig and Clarence were born, Lou started working in the X-ray Department as a technician. Lou remembers one morning going to open the thick lead door to the X-ray room.

The nursing charge. She says, Lou, you can't come in. I'm having a woman deliver on the X-ray table.

What?

She was delivering a baby on the X-ray table. So I pulled the door to her and I walked out the corner.

On his way back out, he then passed two beds usually used for minor operations.

There was two There was a woman in there in labor. Was a woman on the OR table. So that's three. And there was a woman in the corridor in labor. That's five. Between seven o'clock and nine o'clock, there were seven deliveries. As soon as the babies were born, the babies were put in the bassinets with the names on. There was a little room there called the nursery. There was probably four bassinets in it.

Seven babies and only four bassinets.

So they put them in milk cartons, carnation milk cartons.

The babies were put on the floor in the crates used to deliver the milk.

What else could they do? I mean, all it was on was two nurses aides and one nurse.

Nurses aides could be very young, around 16, 17, and they weren't yet fully trained. So that meant just a head nurse and two trainees responsible for all seven births.

I'll tell you, they had their hands full. They weren't obstetricians. They weren't doctors. They weren't even nurses.

The head nurse on this day was the same nurse who attended Muriel Stringer, a woman named Nurse Kalanan. She was also on duty when Craig and Clarence were born. Lou remembers working alongside her.

I got along quite well with her. She was a professional. I think she was fairly fair. She was bossy. She was the boss. If Callan said, Go, she said, Jump, they jumped. They were in all of it.

There are reports in the archives of complaints against Calinan, of nurses aid saying she was overbearing. Some gave her the nickname Nurse Tiger. Picturing the female head nurse as bossy and fierce is a tempting stereotype, and it feels easy to pin the blame on her. But Kalanan was also praised by fellow staff for being highly organized and compassionate to, and for saving lives. Craig has heard these stories, too, and he's cautious.

You can't pin the blame on somebody when you don't know all the facts. But she made rules that to me, was probably part of the blame. They weren't allowed to tighten the band so tight, and the band's falling off the baby's legs. As a baby's born, the baby's fall up, and the swelling starts to go away, and everything gets smaller. And off goes the band.

One of those rules was that the name tags were not tightened right away, and apparently, no other system was put in place.

I can't come out and say, Yes, she was part of the blame, right? But It seems like it probably was something to do with that.

Nurse Calinan died in the 1990s, so we will never be able to ask her how these babies went home with the wrong mothers. For Craig, knowing all this context doesn't change what happened and the long-lasting impact it has had on his life.

When you're going to hospital to have a baby, you're trusting the people that's in there to do everything right to make sure that everything goes the way it's supposed to go. And you come home with your child, not bring home somebody else's child. I don't see how they could let that happen. Someone sent me somewhere where I wasn't supposed to be.

Mistakes happen, of course, but this wasn't one mistake. This was a series of errors, a pattern that resulted in a violation of his basic most fundamental right as a person to be united with his mother and his family.

I've seen a psychologist and everything because this bothers me. My life have changed that much as that. I'm funny. I always said I had a hard to steal. Not a lot bothered me, but now everything bothers me.

Kind of open the floodgates. Yeah. It might be logical to ask why an event so serious, occurring in a hospital run by the government, hasn't been put through the court system. And the answer is, the government of Newfoundland and Labrador gives you 30 years to bring a case forward against them. After that, the clock runs out, unless the government makes an exception. The clock on any potential case had stopped ticking 20 years before Craig and Clarence even discovered what had happened. Craig pulls up a letter that he wrote to the Premier of Newfoundland, looking for answers or some recognition of what they've been through.

This is the letter that I sent to Paul Den, Tom Osborne, Lloyd Perrett, David Brazel, Clifford Small, Chauncey Rogers, and our wonderful Premier, Andrew Ferry. My name is Craig Avery. I'm one of the individuals that were involved in Switch their Bert at the Come by Chance College Aspil on December 1962. I'm writing to you today to appeal to you to please step up. The Come by Chance College Aspil was ran by prevention the government of Newfound Labrador. Therefore, it was the responsibility of your government to make sure proper procedures were followed, so something terrible like this could not happen. Because of an error or a combination of errors that occurred within our healthcare system, My family and I, along with the Irine's family, have suffered tremendously through no fault of our own. After living 50 plus years of my life in a community, surrounded what I believe were my family, an extended family, to one day being confronted with the realization that's not actually case. It sent my life as I knew it into a tailspin. It gave me such a sense of loss of identity that I now question my all existence. I wonder what my parents were like.

Even though I didn't know them, do I have any of their traits? How would my life have been different? These are a few of the thousands of things I question regularly. I never got to meet my biological biological parents, and they went to their graves never knowing of my existence. I have brothers and sisters that I hardly know. Some I have only met a couple of Sometimes this is so wrong. Learning this information and having to live with it on a daily basis have been quite a challenge. I suffer from severe anxiety, which led to panic attacks where I've had to visit the local ER several times. Some of my family members as well as some of the Heinz family also suffer from this, as well as other issues, including depression. This is our new reality, a reality that is a daily struggle. We deserve accountability, we deserve justice, we deserve to be able to move forward in our lives with some peace of mind. I would really I appreciate a response from you. Thank you, Craig Abring.

As Craig waited for answers or any response from the government about what happened to him and Clarence at this hospital, funeral. Something came to light. Come by Chance wasn't the only place in Newfoundland where babies were switched. It happened in another hospital, too. And the first words out of my mother's mouth, she said, Did you find her? That's next time. You've been listening to Come by Chance, produced by Novel for CBC. The series is written and produced by me, Luke Quintin, and produced and edited by Joe Wheeler. Our Assistant Producer is Madelyne Parr. Our Field Producer is Rebecca Nolan. Sound Design and Scoring by Daniel Kemson. Roshnie Nier is our digital coordinating producer. Original Music by Adam Forin. Music Supervision by Joe Wheeler and Nicolas Alexander. Our senior producers are Veronica Simmons, Willow Smith, and Damon Fairlist. Our production managers are Charlotte Wolf, Cherie Houston, and Sara Tobin. The series was developed by Madelyne Parr. Creative Director of Development and Novel is Willard Foxton. The fact checker is Valerio Rocca. Our executive producers are Max O'Brien, Cecil Fernandez, and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is our senior manager, and Arif Narani is the Director of CBC Podcasts.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc. Ca/podcasts.