How a Christmas present united a father and son after 43 years
An unorthodox Christmas present helped unite a man and his son for the first time in 43 years, on the other side of the globe.
Two Christmases ago, Brian Carty of eastern Canada received the gift of a $100 DNA testing kit. He spit in the tube and sent it off in January.
Meanwhile, in London, England, a 43-year old Alex Morris was growing curious about the father he never knew and what medical hazards might be stored in his own DNA.
He submitted his DNA to two ancestry sites and found some mildly interesting information: far-flung fifth cousins, he had a 10 per cent chance of having blond hair, and he had an increased chance of going bald.
Serendipitously, he decided to check one more DNA site. It was the same one Mr Carty used. Bingo.
Armed with the name of a direct relative, Mr Morris sent Mr Carty a friend request on Facebook.
“I got a phone call from my Uncle Brian, asking me if I knew this person who is trying to add him on Facebook,” Rachel Barrett said.
“He showed me this friend request and he’s like, ‘Do we know this guy? Who is this guy?’ And he says he thinks he’s related to us, and I kind of looked at his picture and I thought he did really kind of look like us.”
The hunt for how he was related began.
Blame it on disco
The DNA proved Fredericton’s Carty family were immediate relatives. There were four children in the family, three of them boys.
Mr Morris said his upbringing was good, but his parentage was seldom talked about. He did know he was born in 1975 in Ottawa.
The date excluded Mr Carty, who would have been too young to father a child. That is when John Carty’s phone rang.
“I get a call from my brother David saying, ‘Where were you in 1974?'” John said, laughing. “And I was here in Fredericton, so that was the end of that conversation.”
“So it was me,” David said with a smile. He was Mr Morris’ father.
In 1975, David was in Ottawa for college and gigging with his band. There were many parties across the river in Quebec, in what was then called the city of Hull.
“I was 19 years old … and Hull was just where everybody went to go to,” David said. “It was the disco era, come on. Need I say more?”
An undeniable connection
The night before David spoke for the first time with his newfound son, he snapped a picture of his tube amp system from his Ottawa home and fired it off to Mr Morris. He had heard his son was involved with music and thought it would give him a laugh.
He did laugh — but at the fact he had his own tube amp set-up.
“I thought, “Oh, I see. It’s a chip off the old block stuff, right?'” said Mr Morris, who replied with a picture of his two tube amps the next day.
“I have a studio here and I have valves in the studio in my recording equipment. He has a valve amplifier to listen to records at home.
“So when the similarities finally hit was when I actually met him and that’s when it really became quite spooky in that ‘Wow, this is a kind of peas-in-the-pod situation.'”
Then they spoke.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God. This is my kid and he has a British accent,” said David.
“There we go. It’s wonderful, it’s my father,” Mr Morris said. “I mean, we connected immediately. It was like there had never been any separation, you know?”
On July 1, 2017, Mr Morris touched down in Fredericton, Canada, where David’s mother June Carty and more than 100 family members welcomed their oldest and newest grandson, cousin, nephew and son.
“It happened to be my 90th birthday party and he travelled from England,” she said.
“I was amazed at his looks because there was no denying him.”
Everyone tried not to gawk at their newest relative, but it was hard.
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“I was definitely creeping him, staring at him, because it was just unbelievable, just totally unbelievable, and he looks so much like my cousins and so much like our family,” Ms Barrett said.
Mr Morris met relatives from all over Canada and the U.S, and he met his six half-brothers and sisters.
“It was fantastic,” Mr Morris said. “Grandma, she was like, ‘Come in, grab a plate.’
“It was like The Matrix, where you go to the Oracle. The smell of cooking, and the kind of family and people around, and it was like that moment of ‘Oh, OK, this is always been here and it’s a kind of forever thing.'”
David said it was an emotional first meeting, and the two bonded right away.
“Like love at first sight, an immediate connection the moment I first met him,” he said.
Brian’s last gift
At the reunion, Mr Morris also met his Uncle Brian, who provided the connection that led him across the sea. It would be the only time the pair would meet.
In September, Mr Carty was killed when his car collided with a moose.
His mother June struggled to hold back the tears as she said, “Of course, it has been bittersweet, because we lost Brian this year.
“But we had this new young man come into the family, so the year has been difficult, but it’s had blessings. Very special blessings and I’m thankful for that.”
