DENINU KU'E/FORT RESOLUTION
A Toronto-born woman is on a deeply personal journey to reconnect with her family and culture in Fort Resolution, but there is one big piece of the puzzle missing.
Nadine Delorme, who was born in Toronto and raised by adoptive parents, has discovered her family roots in Fort Resolution, but is still trying to find her birth mother. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo |
Nadine Delorme has been unable to find her birth mother.
"I've done everything from every angle," she said of searching for her mother, Barbara Ann Delorme,
explaining there are many people on the Internet with that name.
"But they're not her, at all. So far, nothing."
Delorme has not seen her birth mother since she was two-years old and was placed in foster care. When she was five, she was adopted and raised by a couple in Toronto.
While growing up Delorme knew the name of birth mother and the fact she was from somewhere in the North, but almost nothing else about her heritage.
However, when Ontario opened adoption files in 2011, she applied for adoption disclosure and discovered her mother was originally from Fort Resolution.
"The only information they had was my original birth registry," she said.
"So I had her name, her birthday and where she was from. So from that I was able to attack further my research."
The registry did not contain the name of her father.
In 2011, she started to make enquiries into Fort Resolution about her mother.
And then in 2012, she met a Dene elder from the Native Women's Association of the NWT at a native agency in Toronto, and told her story. Six months later, she received a call from a Fort Resolution resident who put her in touch with one of her many cousins in the community.
Delorme and her cousin got in touch by telephone.
"We ended up talking two-and-a-half hours, and we got on Facebook right away to see because we might need DNA tests to prove I'm part of the family," she said.
"Well, we don't have to, because I have high resemblance to my cousins."
That was the beginning of her journey, which included meeting that cousin in Ottawa early last year.
"So Feb. 10 of last year was the first time I met my blood, my DNA," she noted.
Then, Delorme and her adoptive father attended a wedding in Fort Resolution last summer and she moved to the community in December.
"I kept telling everybody in Toronto I have to go," she recalled.
"I have to somehow go home. I felt this was where I needed to be."
Delorme - the last name she began using in December - is now a full-time online student in native studies with the University of Alberta, and has become a member of the Fort Resolution Metis Council.
"Fort Resolution has welcomed me magnificently and accepted me with loving and open arms," she said.
However, despite that reconnection to her roots and family, she has still been unable to locate her mother, who was apparently last seen or heard from by anyone in Fort Resolution when she returned for a funeral about 15 years ago.
The 40-year-old Delorme said her mother would be now 61-years old, but she doesn't know if she has married and uses a different last name, or even if she is still alive.
"The clues have led me here, but that's where the path stops," she said.
Now, she has decided to turn to the media to possibly find her birth mother.
Asked what her message would be to her mother, an emotional Delorme simply responded, "Come home."
She had been hoping to do the search privately as much as possible out of respect for her newly-discovered relatives.
If taking her story to the media doesn't work, Delorme said she may consider filing a missing person's report.
"To me she is, and the fact that nobody else knows any information here all these years," she said.
Delorme added that another avenue might be to go through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to see if her mother claimed residential school compensation.
Lizzie Beaulieu, an elder in Fort Resolution, remembers Delorme's mother as a child before she left for Yellowknife.
"After that, I don't know where Barb went," she said. "I don't know if she's still alive."
Like many others in Fort Resolution, Beaulieu would be very happy for Delorme if she eventually finds her mother.
"I sure hope she does."
Delorme's adoptive parents - Louis and Beverly Marsura of Toronto - are also hoping she will be successful in her search.
Beverly Marsura said that, starting at adolescence, there was a need within her adopted daughter to know where she came from and where her biological mother was, and that's still a question.
"We have supported that 100 per cent," she said.
"We have always supported that need to discover who she is, where she's from, where her family is," she said, adding she and her husband are very happy that Delorme has found the people of Fort Resolution."
"Toronto is not the place for Nadine," continued Marsura. "She needs to be with her culture."
