NEW GLASGOW – Anna Bond doesn’t know where her musical talent came from. She doesn’t know whether she looks like her mom or dad. Doesn’t know if she has any brothers or sisters either.
The 18-year-old Pictou County resident was adopted from Romania when she was just an infant.
Her life before adoption is a mystery. The only clue she has is a handful of court papers written in a language she can’t read.
Since the day she left in 1991, she has had no connection with her home country other than her adopted sister Siobhan – that is, she didn’t until September.
She was walking down the street at Mt. Allison University when she coincidentally met Jon Yourtee. They happened to talk and she found  out that he was also was adopted from Romania the very same year she was. He, too, is a musician and is enrolled in the same program as Anna.
“You almost fainted,” Jon reminds her.
“No,” she corrects. “I was very excited because other than my sister I really haven’t met anybody else in the same position.”
That night Anna called her mother Maureen Bond in tears – they were happy tears.
“It was really important for me because I never really had the chance to talk about what I’d been through to anybody else in Pictou County,” Anna said.
Being adopted isolated her for a lot of her life. While she could talk some to her sister, she was reluctant to talk about it with her adopted mother because she was worried she might upset her with her questions.
“There’s not many people that understand what comes with it,” she said.
Luckily, Jon isn’t like many people.
He lives in New Hampshire, but because his adoptive mother is originally from P.E.I. he found out about Mt. Allison and decided to go there.
While he’s been in contact with lots of other adopted children because of a non-profit organization his mother runs, he said meeting Anna was different
“Everyone else is younger and you can’t really talk to them, and it’s been great to be able to talk back and forth with Anna,” he said. “Talking to your parents is wonderful, but it really is nice to have someone your own age who is in the same position.”
This past weekend, Anna took Jon home to New Glasgow to show him the place that has formed her life.
“Pictou County has given me a lot of opportunities,” she said.
She has been able to achieve success because of Maureen Bond who spent her life savings to bring her and her sister home, and cared for the girls with the help of her father. Both Maureen and her father gave the girls lives that would otherwise have been impossible.
But Anna is thankful that now she has someone who she can relate to and wonder about her past with.
Maureen is so happy about the fact the two met, she tears up when she talks about it.
“To me that’s not an accident,” she said. “That’s from above.”