Man reunites with brother 70 years after he was put in Ontario asylum

After over 70 years apart, Bob Mann never thought he’d see his younger brother Ed again.

He was lost in the provincial care system as a young boy, yet somehow found again as a senior.

Ed Mann was born in 1939, the youngest of six siblings. With his father serving overseas during the Second world war his mother did her best to care for him.

But his physical and mental disability proved too much for her to handle.

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“She kept Ed at home and looked after him as long as she possibly could,” says Bob Mann.

“And she just reached a point where she couldn’t… because of his condition, she couldn’t handle it anymore. And I think probably the doctors recommended that he should be institutionalized.”

2:08 A family reunion decades in the making

He was sent to the infamous Ontario hospital school in Orillia.

Once called the Orillia Asylum for Idiots, it closed for good in 2009. But its sordid history remains an embarrassment for the province.

It was overcrowded and many of those who were housed there complained of abuse. It’s unclear if Ed Mann was a victim.

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What is clear is that Bob Mann’s parents were told by the doctors that Ed would likely not live past the age of 20 because of his problems.

So the Mann family lived their lives but they always wondered what happened to Ed.

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2:01 Heart attack victim and life-saver reunion

Five years ago Bob decided he needed to know. He looked through cemeteries for gravestones bearing his brother’s name to no avail.

Then he requested government records to track down what happened to Ed.

“The most important thing I found out in reading these papers,” Bob says, “was that Ed had been discharged from Orillia long after I thought he would have died – and transferred to a mental rehabilitation centre in Woodstock ON.”

The trail then led him to three different centres in Kitchener.

And after three years of wading through bureaucratic red tape he drove to the Sunbeam Centre with his son-in-law.  When they walked up to reception they received the shock of their lives.

WATCH: An Ontario family broken up during the Second World War never thought they’d be whole again

0:52 Man reunites with brothers after more than 70 years apart

“The girl in the office looked at me and she says ‘you don’t have to tell me who you are.  Or who you’re here to see…   You look like Ed’s brother,’” he recalled.

“Well, certainly the facial features were – they could be almost twins, really,” Sunbeam’s Deb Widdes said. “You could tell right away that they were family.”

They pulled Ed’s file which clearly said: “Parents deceased. No known relatives.” Bob didn’t know that Ed was alive, and nobody knew that Ed still had family looking for him.

“We were all so excited that day – like everybody in the whole place was just so excited that day,” says Widdes. “Every time I think about it, I get goosebumps.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "We were all so excited that day - like everybody in the whole place was just so excited that day," says Widdes. "Every time I think about it, I get goosebumps."

Ed is no longer able to speak or walk on his own.

And although he’s confined to a wheelchair his family believes he knows what’s going on.

“At first, he – I don’t think he grasped it,” says Bob’s son-in-law Peter Andersen. “Now that Bob’s visited many times, I think there’s a real bond right now.”