Kuujjuarapik woman reunited with southern Ontario father
Man follows his heart and finds his adult daughter 3 hours after landing in remote Nunavik village
This summer, George Luchuk of Milbrooke, Ont., decided to go searching for the daughter he'd never met.
"I had that in my heart all my life." Luchuk told CBC's Quebec AM.
It had been 55 years since he set foot in the remote northern Quebec community of Kuujjuarapik when he landed there on August 15.
As a young man of 19, he worked for the Hudson Bay Company in Kuujjuarapik – then known as Great Whale River – where he met an Inuk woman, Mary Miluctu.
"She was a beautiful girl!" he recalls.
Luchuk said he didn't find out about the baby until he was living in another northern community where he'd been transferred by Hudson Bay. One day an Inuk woman from Great Whale River was visiting and came looking for him with a message.
"'Mary had a daughter, and she looks like you,'" Luchuk said she told him.
"I was absolutely shocked. I knew nothing about it."
Search for resolution
Luchuk went on to build a life in southern Ontario and had four children there.
Decades later, at the age of 75, he felt it was time to find out what had happened to his daughter.
"Like most of us, our brains takes charge of our lives, but the odd time our heart takes charge," he said.
"This time I let my heart take charge."
I let my heart take charge.- George Luchuk
Luchuk booked a flight without telling any of his relatives what he was doing.
After landing in Kuujjuarapik, he had second thoughts, but he convinced himself to go for a walk.
It wasn't long before he was picked up by a local, and after chatting for a short while, he was introduced to a woman who was the daughter of a former colleague.
She put two and two together.
Jeannie-Louisa Fleming was at work when her friend called saying she had a surprise.
The friend wouldn't reveal what it was until Fleming was about to go into the house where her biological father was waiting.
Within three hours of landing in Kuujjuarapik, Luchuk was reunited with his daughter, then met his three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
"When I saw him, I couldn't believe my eyes," Fleming said. "I was really surprised. He looks like me."
"I still don't believe it even now. It's been so many years, I thought he was dead."
'He's going to come'
Fleming was adopted and raised by an Inuit couple in her community.
She stayed in contact with her biological mother. With the little information her birth mother gave her, Fleming looked for Luchuk, but without knowing his name or where he was from, she soon ran into roadblocks and gave up.
Fleming says although she wished Luchuk had come looking for her sooner, she had always believed she would meet her father.
"He's going to come," she says she would tell herself as a child. "He's going to go see me. I think he knows I'm alive."
Fleming said it's even more poignant having Luchuk come into her life now, as both her adoptive parents and her biological mother have died.
As for Luchuk's southern family, he says they are very loving and have embraced the news of his newfound daughter, and they hope to plan a family reunion in the not-too-distant future.
"I'm still amazed that I actually met my daughter," Luchuk says. "It's still very raw. It's going to take time to digest everything."
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