An emotional moment filled with tears and laughter 66 years in the making unfolded at Winnipeg’s airport Tuesday.
Lonita Stewart met the sisters she never knew she had for the first time in person.
Sister Gwen Ross-Cieslak said she tried finding Stewart for years after her aunt mentioned a baby out of wedlock, but was told never to speak of it.
Then came online DNA records and the discovery of a close connection.
"I just got this feeling,” said Ross-Cieslak. “I knew it was her. I wrote back and said I don't think you're my cousin. I'm pretty sure you're my sister.”
In 1951, in Sioux Lookout Ont., 19-year-old Nora Ross was sent to Montreal where she gave her daughter up for adoption.
Ross got married, had a family, then moved to Winnipeg.
Ross died of cancer in her 40s and never told her other children about the baby.
Meantime, Stewart's adopted parents had taken her overseas. Now living north of Toronto, she has no family of her own.
“Just astonishing. For 66 years I never realized that anyone was even looking. Because of low self-esteem, I thought, who would bother,” said Stewart
The reunited sisters say it must have been awful having to carry for their mother to carry the secret for so long and believe she would have wanted them to find each other.
“Without a doubt,” said Lynn Colliou. “And it feels like a piece of my mom, you know, and realistically is it."
In June the Quebec changed rules around information on adoptions.
Stewart said she has submitted an application to confirm the name of her birth father and is waiting for a reply.
