YELLOWKNIFE - Margaret Macpherson came to the school named for her father this week and told students about Norm Macpherson.

Margaret Macpherson, daughter of Norm Macpherson, stands in the library at NJ Macpherson school which was named after her father. Macpherson spoke to students about the person behind the school, and showed them an old photo taken of him when he was in his 30's. - Jessica Klinkenberg/NNSL photo

"I want them to realize that NJ Macpherson was a person, not a school," said Macpherson, who missed out on the school's official opening and its 10 year anniversay celebration.

"I just wanted to see the school," said Macpherson, who found the building to be much like her father.

"It's bright, you can feel the eager energy of the kids," she said, and it would have pleased her father a lot.

Macpherson heard one young student ask a librarian if NJ Macpherson had been a real person.

"He was a real person, he loved people, he really loved people," Macpherson said.

"Was he a very good father?" A Grade One student at NJ Macpherson asked her.

"He was a very, very good father," she answered with a smile.

Her father was principal at Sir John Franklin high school, then he was the superintendent before becoming the director.

He died in 1984, she said, but she keeps his memory alive.

Macpherson also has five brothers and a sister, and she said her father gave them a love of people and positive energy.

"He instilled in us certain values. I was quite young when he died. I talk to my kids about how wonderful of a human being he was."

Her father traveled across the North for his job with the school board, and she said that he was missed during those absences.

"He gave us a very secure world that rested on his shoulders, despite his absences."

While in Yellowknife, Macpherson also met the literary council to discuss a scholarship that was started in her father's name, but has been dormant for eight years.