Fort Simpson (Apr 22/05) - The daughter Leo Norwegian never knew came home last week.

The two of them embraced warmly in an emotional introduction on April 11.

"I felt so good. I never thought this was going to happen," Norwegian said in an interview a few days after meeting his daughter Lily (Tina) Norwegian. "At this moment I'm real happy that she's here while I can still get around."

Lily is the youngest of Leo's five children with his former wife, Terry.

The family split up before Lily was born - Leo and sons Bruce and Steven in Fort Simpson along with daughter Pearl; Terry, pregnant, eventually wound up back in her home town of Tsiigehtchic with their other daughter, Esther.

Lily had all kinds of questions for Leo about the past, but since meeting him she said those questions just don't matter any more.

"I'm grateful that I've met you, and that I've been given that opportunity and it didn't slip away," she told Leo while sitting next to him on the couch.

"My heart's just throbbing. I'm going to cry."

Now working for the Northern Gas Project Secretariat in Yellowknife, Lily is just three credits short of attaining her degree in Aboriginal Government.

Her studies at Red River College and the University of Winnipeg have given her an understanding of how the residential school experience often led to dysfunction and tore families apart.

She said healing has to take place and, for her, last week's visit to Fort Simpson helped her on that path.

"Coming here, when my father put his arms around me, that was a piece of the puzzle," she said.

She said she met many other relatives during her stay.

She was also reunited with sister Pearl, who met her for the first time in Edmonton 20 years ago.

They sat on the couch, holding hands. Pearl wiped tears from her eyes as they talked of how things might have been if their siblings hadn't all passed away in the intervening years.

Come June, Lily said she plans to return to Fort Simpson with her daughter and granddaughter so they too can meet Leo and the other relatives.

Lily's return visit can't come soon enough for Leo.

"Now that I've met her I want to see her often," he said. "I don't want to wait another 40 years."