Childhood Friends Turn Out To Be Brothers

An idyllic scene: Childhood friends, 11 or 12 years old, smiling at an Ottawa beach in the 1950s. One is holding a beach ball. The other is wearing a baseball cap.

It’s a photo that Duncan Cumming, now 72, and Ron Cole, 71, both held on to, after all these years.

It wasn’t until last year, however, that they found out that they are biological brothers.

Friends as children at Mutchmor Public School, Cumming and Cole lost touch after Cole moved away when they were about 12 or 13 years old.

We were chums in public school for about two or three years, not knowing that we were brothers. It’s unbelievable
Cole became a cattle farmer in Saskatchewan. Cumming did security work in Ottawa, but eventually moved to his wife Shane’s native land of Guernsey, an island in the English Channel between the U.K. and France.

Having reconnected after 60 years, the two retirees are now planning a reunion in Ottawa for next month.

Both men were raised by adoptive families, but they share a birth mother. Last November, an organization called Parent Finders Ottawa put the pieces together. A co-ordinator with the organization got in touch with both men to share the news.

“His name came up. I said to my wife, ‘I knew a Ron Cole when I went to public school and he lived on Woodlawn Avenue,’” said Cumming.

“We were chums in public school for about two or three years, not knowing that we were brothers. It’s unbelievable.”

Just a couple of days before Cole got a phone call from Parent Finders, he said he was organizing papers around his computer desk when a folder with pictures inside fell off the shelf.

When she mentioned Duncan Cumming, that name kind of rang a bell
“I was moving them to get them out of the way. I dropped them, and out fell this picture of Duncan. I looked at this and I thought, ‘Why did I save this picture? What is this?’” said Cole.

When Parent Finders called him, Cole said he thought it was a scam. Someone had recommended the organization to him more than a decade ago, and he had given them his phone number, but he forgot about it.

“I was about to hang up, but she had a little too much information on my adopted family. She knew things that normally people wouldn’t know,” he said. “I started to listen. When she mentioned Duncan Cumming, that name kind of rang a bell.”

Not long after he got off the phone with the organization, he got another phone call, this time from Cumming. It was their first contact in six decades.

The two kids had been raised just a few blocks away from each other, said Cole. Their parents didn’t know. “My parents had a cottage, and he’d been there, and I’d been to his place,” he said.

Cumming said the two used to hang around together after school until suppertime. They didn’t look alike. He said he absolutely never would’ve guessed they were brothers.

Finding Cole was the result of a long search. Cumming had been looking for his biological mother for about 25 years. When he found out that she had passed away, he began to search for the brother and sister that he knew were out there somewhere, he said.

It’s kind of cool. It’s a great story
He is still looking for his sister, a Diane Beattie, born in Ottawa in 1952. She was not adopted, but remained in the care of the Children’s Aid Society until she reached the age of majority.

For Cole, reconnecting with Cumming is a great opportunity to revisit the past, although he hadn’t made the efforts to search for biological relatives that Cumming had.

“I was given up for adoption. I had a good life, a good upbringing. I knew right from wrong, and they were my real parents, as far as I was concerned,” said Cole.

“But it’s kind of cool. It’s a great story.”

Ron Cole said he is looking forward to showing his wife, Ronna, his old neighbourhood around Woodlawn Avenue, or whatever parts of it still stand.

“Ron and Ronna,” he said, chuckling. “Now, there’s another weird story.”