Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

NNSL (Mar 05/99) - One of the happiest moments in 73-year-old Steven Kircz's life happened a couple years ago when he reunited with his two daughters who he had not seen for 31 years.

Now, he sits at his kitchen table sipping coffee and sadly recounting how he left his wife and family in Winnipeg, Man., 33 years ago.

He suggests finding someone else in his bed as the main reason why he took off for the North without looking back.

He never sent any money or other communication.

In fact, it was not until his persistent daughter, Debbie Mondor, made extraordinary efforts to find him that the family was reunited.

"Once I went through the operator in the United States and called operators in every single state to try to get a hold of him," she says of some of her search techniques.

"I had been searching for quite a long time. I would search a bit one year and then years would go by and I'd think about him again and try to find him."

Finally the Internet provided the research capabilities for her to locate three likely matches for "Steven Kircz," she says.

"At first he denied he had ever lived in Manitoba. I guess it was kind of a shock to hear someone say, 'Hello, I'm your daughter,'" says Mondor.

"I phoned the hospital in Inuvik and talked to one of the nurses and she knew what his birthday was, which was the same, his middle name and that he had been a mechanic for his life."

She explains her far-reaching search by saying "I guess everybody wants to know who their father is. He's older now and I think he has a lot of regrets and as the years go by it's harder to go back."

Both Mondor and her sister Diane drove to Edmonton in 1997 when Kircz was in the hospital there for a cornea examination, and all are happy they have met.

As for Kircz, when asked where he worked in Inuvik during the three decades, he says he worked for the town as a mechanic at a garage and for the Department of Transportation helping build the Dempster Highway.

He says he never sent money to his family because he did not have much himself and often did not get paycheques. Long pauses punctuate each of his answers because of his failing memory.

"I tell you the truth, no damn good," he says of area doctors while showing a detached thumb and how area health care was unable to help him with it.

His failing health is one reason he starts to cry when he talks of how much he wants to see his four grandchildren.

Because money is tight, Mondor is trying to get financial help from the airlines or other sources to hold a family meeting where Kircz can finally meet his grandchildren.