{"id":329775,"date":"2025-12-07T06:27:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T06:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/329775\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T06:27:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T06:27:25","slug":"take-home-dna-test-reunites-quebec-man-with-long-lost-dutch-brother-after-80-years-montreal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/329775\/","title":{"rendered":"Take-home DNA test reunites Quebec man with long-lost Dutch brother after 80 years – Montreal"},"content":{"rendered":"

A birthday gift led to the discovery of a lifetime when a MyHeritage DNA test revealed an 80-year family mystery, finding that a man in Quebec and a man in the Netherlands are long-lost brothers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Frank McGrath, 78, of Longueuil, Que., and Frans Bannink, 80, of Almelo, Netherlands, met for the first time in April after a DNA test taken by Bannink\u2019s granddaughter showed a family connection to Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy grandfather was hesitant to find out who his biological father was,\u201d said Amber Hogervorst, who made the trip to Canada with her grandparents.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I saw the connection on the website, I immediately sent Frank a message and he responded some weeks later.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rest, she says, is history.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt was very emotional for me. I was very happy,\u201d McGrath said. \u201cHaving been brought up an only child, to find out I had an older brother \u2026 and a brother who looks like our father.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The two men share a father, Staff Sgt. Dermot McGrath, a Canadian soldier stationed in the Netherlands after its liberation during the Second World War. Dermot McGrath met Frank\u2019s mother several years after Frans Bannink was born.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t know. He never talked about it,\u201d said McGrath. \u201cHe was married for 60 years to my mother and she passed away. That was his loyalty. If he had known \u2026 we all would have known.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brothers described their first in-person meeting in Amsterdam as immediate and natural.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe landed in Amsterdam and rented a hotel near Frans\u2019 home. We met every day for four days. We had some really good times,\u201d McGrath said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHe came downstairs at the hotel and I said, \u2018There\u2019s the guy.\u2019 It was instant,\u201d said Frans Bannink.<\/p>\n

Both families were struck by strong physical resemblances, shared mannerisms, and striking coincidences, including the nearly identical names of the two brothers: Frans and Francis, who goes by Frank.<\/p>\n

The reunion has laid the foundation for an ongoing relationship between the families.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an instant connection between the two of them, and also us,\u201d said McGrath\u2019s wife, Johanne Tremblay McGrath.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy newfound sister-in-law \u2014 same values, we are both huggers, and both criers,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

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Once separated by 5,000 kilometres, the two families now share an inexplicable closeness. Despite a deep sense of what might have been, both families are looking forward to the years ahead.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A birthday gift led to the discovery of a lifetime when a MyHeritage DNA test revealed an 80-year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,2766,295,5105,145436,2338,145437,44,66],"class_list":["post-329775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dna","tag-environment","tag-features","tag-longueuil","tag-montreal","tag-myherritage","tag-news","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}