71-year-old ’60s Scoop survivor meets sister she didn’t know existed

Tyler Barrow

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Published: June 17, 2026 

Marie Miller always thought she was an orphan, but she reunited with a sister she never knew she had earlier this year.

Marie Miller always believed she was an orphan.

It was only later the Calgary woman learned she was taken as a baby from her grandmother’s arms as part of the ’60s Scoop in Winnipeg.

On Tuesday, she finally met the sister she never knew she had—Sally Tripp.

“I can’t believe she’s here,” said Miller, now 71.

“She’s not going home, (but) if she is going home, I’m going home with her.”

“It’s really happening. (It’s) unbelievable,” said Tripp, 72.

The ’60s Scoop was a time from the 1950s through the 1980s where Canadian government policy allowed for the removal of an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Indigenous children from their families.

They were then placed in non-Indigenous homes.

At just two years old, Miller was put in a foster home in Selkirk, Man.

The home she ended up in was less than 40 minutes from where her birth family lived.

“I went to school with some of my relatives and didn’t even know it,” said Miller.

“I was just very alone; I was pretty much on my own.’

Marie Miller

One of her earliest recollections is playing with a doll in a big house with a sunken living room at age nine.

Miller described her childhood with her adoptive parents as unpleasant.

“They were not kind to me growing up at all,” said Miller.

“They were very standoffish toward me.

“There was no kindness or warmth at all; I never felt it.”

Around 12 years old, she knew she “didn’t belong” in her adoptive home.

“It was just a feeling I needed to be with my own people,” she said.

“They would constantly tell me that I was nothing but an Indian and that I was never going to be anything.

“I knew early on I was not comfortable in this home.”

She struggled for years to connect with her birth family via adoption records or any information she could glean from her adoptive parents.

“When all this came out—that it was wrong to take these children in the first place—that’s when records started to disappear and any of the illegal adoptions or shady adoptions were covered up,” said Miller.

After some reluctance, her husband convinced her to use Ancestry.ca for DNA testing.

After sending in her information, a cousin popped up, and they connected.

She then took her birth certificate’s long version, where she matched an address in Winnipeg where her birth mother lived after she was born.

“My cousin almost stopped breathing,” said Miller.

“She said, ‘That’s where I used to live. That was our grandparents’ house.’”

The home remained in the family.

Miller was given a list of potential family members who all turned out to be related.

While connecting with her cousin, she verified blood relations to Miller’s father.

It was one of her cousin’s sisters who told Miller she had a sister.

“I said, ‘Give me her number,’” said Miller.

Miller connected with Tripp on Jan. 17, and the two learned they previously crossed paths.

“We both were at the Winnipeg roller rink at the same time; we both went to Midtown Buffet at the same time,” said Miller.

Sally Tripp

For Tripp, it has also been a welcome moment meeting her younger sister.

Tripp has extensive knowledge of the family history and says both she and Miller were put in adoptive care in 1955 by their mother, who has since passed.

Their father came to rescue both from adoptive care before they were put up for adoption.

Then, as Tripp tells the story, the authorities came to their home and decided the family could look after her, but the family was not fit to handle Miller and took her from her grandmother’s arms.

Sisters Marie Miller (right) and Sally Tripp were separated when they were babies in the ’60s Scoop.

Tripp has been looking for Miller for a long time, and Tuesday’s gathering in Strathmore, Alta., brought her closure.

“That first phone call was over 3.5 hours,” said Tripp.

“To find her after all this time. And, you know, the sad part is she didn’t know she had a family.”

The two sisters are set to head to a family reunion in Selkirk on June 28, where they’ll meet with dozens of family members.

“I can’t wait; I got the camper packed,” said Miller.

The two share other half-siblings, but they are each other’s only full siblings.

Miller does have an appointment to get her status card while attending the family reunion, for which Tripp will vouch for her.

Kuster: How George Floyd pulled a '60s Scoop survivor out of a dark pit

 

Thousands of people gathered at Poppy Plaza in Calgary to protest against racism and police brutality on Wednesday, June 3, 2020. For Paul Kuster, it was a catalyst for putting his life back together. Photo by Azin Ghaffari /Postmedia Archive

The irony was that I am a survivor of the ’60s Scoop. I’d been taken away from my native family at birth (no, my mother didn’t drink or do drugs) and was what I call “The Flavour of the Month,” the feature brown baby in the Regina Leader-Post. (Yes, they actually did that, it was a thing.) I felt like I was in the adopt-a-pet section of the paper: “Here, everybody, you can adopt this pooch or tabby, or even this brown kid!” and was adopted by a lovely white family (That’s why I’m an Indian named Kuster — place punchlines here) and at that particular time, I’d just found my true biological family (no thanks to Saskatchewan Social Services, the Department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs in Ottawa, but THAT’S a whole other tale). I was lucky, I have two amazing families; one white, the other Aboriginal, and I fit in both worlds. 

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Adoption reunion: Calgary woman meets her daughter after 39 years

'I was expecting a name, I wasn't expecting a mom,' says Tamela Dunn after meeting birth mother Jo-Ann Gerow

Making and remaking the bed, taking long walks and writing in her diary, Jo-Ann Gerow does everything she can to pass the time.
She is waiting for a very special visitor.
"Surreal, like I'm waiting to wake up from a dream," Gerow said about the day she has hoped would happen for almost 40 years.
Gerow is 59, but she gave birth to a baby girl when she was 19 and gave her up for adoption.

Jo-Ann Gerow had two other daughters after Tamela Dunn's birth but never married. (Terri Trembath/CBC)

"I had just graduated high school, and wasn't too sure what I was going to be doing with my life, or in my life, and I had thought about giving the baby up to a member of my family, but then I thought I would get jealous over time," said Gerow.
The year was 1976. Gerow was kept in hospital to care for the baby for 10 days.
Originally from Burns Lake, B.C., Gerow was living in Kitimat, B.C., and clearly remembers the day she left the hospital.

A missing piece

"When I walked out, the sun was shining. I felt that on my face and I looked across the city of Kitimat and I started praying to God that he would bless and protect her and that we would be reunited one day," Gerow said.
Not knowing where her daughter went, or anything about the family that adopted her, Gerow says she had no choice but to continue living life.
Over the years, Gerow went on to have two other daughters, but she never married. She says her first child was always a part of her.
Year after year, she would hang an ornament for her on the Christmas tree and send prayers her way on birthdays. When the B.C. government opened their adoption filing system up in the early 1990s, she took action.
"I sent my affidavit requesting information in regards to the adoption, so I've been searching for quite a while," says Gerow.
Little did she know, her daughter was searching too.
"I walked around my entire life with a missing piece and I never understood it," said 39-year-old Tamela Dunn.
Dunn says she actively searched for her birth mother for 20 years but it was very difficult.

A message of hope

"Because of the fact of the old-style hospital, a lot of the records got deteriorated, there was a lot of information that was unreadable and so there was a lot that happened, and it was just an uphill battle," said Dunn.
It was an uphill administrative battle, as well as an emotional one. Dunn admits she had fears and anxiety about the idea of finally finding and meeting her birth mother.
"There's a lot of horror stories out there about people reuniting and sometimes it not working out so well," Dunn said.
This mother-daughter reunion was anything but a horror story.
Using a non-profit reconnection group out of B.C., Spirit of the Children, Dunn found Gerow this past March and called her up.
"I answered the phone and said, 'Hello?' And there was nothing and I went 'Hello?' And all I could hear was a gasp and for some odd reason I knew, and I said, 'You know, it's been 39 years since the last time I heard you breathe,'" said Gerow.
Almost two months later, after a 14-hour drive from Vancouver, Dunn and Gerow were hugging and crying on the front step of Gerow's northeast Calgary home.
The women say they want their story told as a message of hope to others still searching for their birth families.
As for Dunn, she says she has found that missing piece in her life and is happy to feel whole all over again.

"I was expecting a name, I wasn't expecting a mom."

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