NNSL (Jun 01/98) - A Pangnirtung woman's 44-year search to find her deceased mother is over.Rebecca Kanayuk travelled with her family earlier this month to Quebec, where she walked before her mother's unmarked grave and finally said goodbye.

"At first, I really didn't quite believe it but at the same time I knew we were going down. I was a bit nervous. I was emotional at times," said Kanayuk.

Kanayuk's mother, like hundreds of Inuit, was transferred south in the 1950s and 1960s for tuberculosis treatment in Montreal, Quebec, Toronto or Hamilton, Ont.

"I was maybe five or six months old when that happened to my mother," said Kanayuk in an earlier interview.

"The bad thing about it was that she was breast-feeding me and she had to leave me with my grandparents. My father and my grandparents knew that she was sick. But apparently after a month they sent her on the C.D. Howe."

On Sept. 23, 1953, the family received a message informing them that Mary Veevee had died.

Kanayuk was told her mother had something wrong with her heart. "She died on the operating table. Apparently they touched the heart accidentally and she died," she said.

Since 1986, Kanayuk has searched for her mother but because graves were left unmarked, no one could pinpoint exactly where she was buried.

With help from Baffin Central MLA Tommy Enuaraq and legislative researchers, Mary's grave was found this spring.

The territorial government paid for two family members to fly down. The airline tickets alone were $1,852 per person.

The other costs were paid by her husband Peter's vacation travel allowance from the hamlet, where he works and donations from the community.

The family stayed at the home of a family member, Rebecca Veevee, in Quebec.

Kanayuk, along with her father, Simo Veevee, husband Peter Kanayuk, brother Adamie Veevee and sister-in-law Contasie Veevee, went to Quebec.

Before the family arrived, Enuaraq, Rev. Louie Mike and James Arreak worked on the grave and marked it off with a piece of string for the Veevees and Kanayuks.

"We had a real burial ceremony right at the spot and had a prayer. At first I was so emotional. So was my father and my brother. I was crying for the first hour or so," said Kanayuk.

"At the grave site I left what I had felt, what I have thought about, for the past 40 years, I guess you can say I maybe laying my mother to rest for the first time. I felt relieved right after and I've been much happier since."

Kanayuk, though happy to see the grave, is upset that the grave site was not marked by the government in the first place. She is pleased, however, with the territorial government.

"I thank the NWT government who paid for my dad's and brother's airfare and especially for Tommy and whoever helped us find the grave site. Tommy did a lot of work."

"The whole thing was like it was never finished so we went down and finished everything for that part of life anyway," she said.

The family is now planning a funeral service for Mary Veevee in the community church.