Mr. Speaker, in the spirit of Valentine's Day and on the topic of romance, I would like to share a story, a love story that recently unfolded here in the North. The story starts with a beautiful young woman attending the Living Word Bible Institute in Swan River, Manitoba, in the 1950s. She meets the brother of a friend who ends up attending the same college. They fall in love. She finishes college one year ahead of him. They part company, leaving their plans flexible.

It's 1960 and she answered the call to go to Fort Resolution in the NWT to help Gordon and Ruth Bailey pastor a small church there. She never hears from her college sweetheart and it seems that they lose track of each other, which is understandable, considering that in those days, there were no telephones and mail delivery is just every few weeks in Fort Resolution. After three years in Resolution, she moves on to Hay River where she divides her time between a small church in Fort Resolution and Fort Providence. She then spends the next three-and-a-half years in Cambridge Bay and resigns herself to the fact that her friend has moved on with his life and so she must also.

In 1968, she again pastors in Fort Resolution until taking up what would be her longest commitment to any church, which is in Fort Smith in 1974. Mr. Speaker, I met Eva Nichol almost 30 years ago on subsequent trips to Smith and while dating my own husband Rick. It was no doubt that Eva Nichol never gave up on the idea of getting married. She observed many budding romances, married and counselled many young couples but as the years passed, I was amazed by her optimism. She kept very busy with her work in Smith, even though I know it was sometimes tough when she didn't have a lot of help and she was alone. She started a college there. She called it the Sub-Arctic Leadership Training and it fulfilled her vision of training indigenous Northerners to be spiritual leaders, pastors and councillors to their own people. She was a very convincing and persuasive woman and she got work crews and finances and in 1994, she built a college in Fort Smith.

So I was always kind of humoured by her assertions that she would get married someday because the years were going by. Because Eva was single all those years, she had much time to spend with others and she spent many nights on the phone with people and pastors from around the world praying with them and supporting them. Who knows if she would have been able to fulfill her dream for the Lord if she had chosen the love of a man over the love of the Lord?

A year ago this month, her old flame, Gary Ziehl, lost his wife to illness and not wanting to be alone, his thoughts returned to his college sweetheart. So out of the blue, Eva Nichol got a phone call which turned to be many more phone calls. Mr. Speaker, I am going to have to seek unanimous consent to continue with the conclusion of this happy story.