SWITCHED

In 1962, nurses at a small Canadian hospital sent home two women with the wrong babies. Then, 50 years later, their children discovered the shocking mistake.

- Lindsay Jones

Rita Hynes lugged her pregnant body up the rural hospital’s wooden steps. It was the night of 7 December 1962, and her rounded belly tightened with each contraction. At the hospital, she felt the intensifying crests of pain—at first bearable, then searing as the night wore on. Just after midnight, the cries of her new baby pierced the air. A boy! She named him Clarence Peter Hynes. He was deposited in the hospital’s nursery and tucked into a bassinet, while Rita dozed in the women’s ward.

Clarence, whom everyone calls Clar, grew up in a Canadian fishing town, St. Bernard’s, perched on the edge of Fortune Bay in the North Atlantic island province of Newfoundland. His father, Ches, was a fisherman, and Clar was the first in a steady stream of infants to arrive at the Hyneses’ home. Clar slept in a top bunk in a room he shared with his brothers. They were fairer than he was—Clar had a toasty complexion and a head of thick, dark hair. He grew to become a local heartthrob, with a chiselled brow and lean, muscular frame. When he drove his navy blue Chevy Camaro around town, the teenage girls of St. Bernard’s swooned.

At age 24, Clar met a woman named Cheryl at a motel bar in Marystown, farther down the boot-shaped peninsula from where he grew up. She was the belle of the bar, and he was instantly smitten. As the two talked over beers and glasses of rum and 7Up,Cheryl found him attentive and kind. They danced and chatted the night away. She didn’t want it to end. They were married two years later in Marystown’s white, steepled Anglican church.