A Sixties Scoop survivor who wrote an autobiography about her experience hopes that sharing her story will not only raise awareness but perhaps also embolden others with similar life experiences to embark on their own personal path of healing.
Shirleylee Shields, who moved to Sundre about a year ago, was taken away from her biological parents at the age of three and subsequently placed into the care of a foster family in a strict religious sect.
She recently offered a presentation at the Sundre Municipal Library to provide insight into her 2009 book, A World Within A World. She also penned a sequel called My Son My Son.
During a June 13 interview with the Albertan, the 58-year-old candidly recounted the long, difficult journey of self-discovery that ultimately led her to walk away from a fundamentalist life that was forced upon her and to reconnect with her family and heritage.
Sharing experience a liberating step
“There’s no more skeletons in the closet,” she said with a laugh in response to being asked how seeing her published story felt. “You have nothing to hide. It was the most freeing, cleansing thing to do, was to reveal and to bring all of this out and throw it on the table.”
At first, she confessed being “petrified” that nobody would even want to read her story. But A World Within A World is now on its fourth print run, while copies of My Son My Son are out of stock for now.
Born on May 1, 1965 in Benito – a small, rural Manitoba community just east of the border with Saskatchewan – Shields lived only briefly for three years with her six other biological siblings and parents, an English mom named Myrtle Harrington and a Métis dad called Herman Moses Bercier, at a home in the Roblin area south of where she was born.
“Me and my younger brother had been removed from the home and put into foster care and dad didn’t even know anything about it,” she said. “He came home (from working in the bush) and we were gone.”
Shields was fostered into a family that already had 10 children – making her a distant 11th – not far away from Roblin in a relatively remote rural community called Shortdale, Man., where her adoptive parents owned and worked a farm.
“They were part of the Mennonite society, but they were the Holdeman sector, which is the strictest of the Mennonite society,” she said. “There was no radio, no television, no higher education, no makeup, no jewelry; the list is endless. That’s where they dropped me off when I was three.
“It was all I knew, from three years old. You grow up with that environment, it’s just like a cult,” she said. “That’s why my book is called A World Within A World.”
Raised by her foster parents Benjamin and Tina Isaac, the couple eventually adopted her at age 10; a decision she would not find out until years later was actually Benjamin’s idea.
Strict religious upbringing
Amid a strict religious upbringing that demanded unquestioning conformity to rigid rules, Benjamin was among the few silver linings to be found.
“Even though he was a staunch believer and a member of the Holdeman Mennonite society – he loved me,” she said. “He is the only human that I knew growing up that loved me unconditionally; I did everything with my dad. He never hit me; he was the kindest soul that you could imagine.”
He even seemed to understand the internal struggle she faced on a daily basis.
“He knew,” she said. “Even when I was young – six or seven – I would look at him and I’d say, ‘I don’t belong here.’ And he’d say, ‘Well, for now, you do.’”
Expressing a deep respect born of affection for her adoptive father, she said, “I loved him and he loved me.”
Sometimes, she said he was even reprimanded.
“He’d be (temporarily) expelled from the church for associating with what they considered ‘worldly’ people; so, people of the town,” she said. “It blows your mind at the mentality that they are allowed to sit in judgment of every human being on this planet, but yet they will preach god’s love or whatever they want to believe Sunday morning. I mean, it’s just ludicrous.”
Yet she never developed a connection or relationship with Tina, who died in a vehicle collision in which only Benjamin and Shields survived; she was 15 at the time and subsequently sent away to live in Steinbach, Man. for 11 years.
But she does remember Tina as a “phenomenal gardener” who knew how to prepare a hearty meal.
“We were never hungry; we ate very well,” she said.
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