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“I really couldn’t believe it: ‘Is this really true?’” Rodel, 42, recalled of that late-night January phone call with Canadian lawyer Rob Tibbo. “I was so extremely happy. I said ‘My birthday is coming and Keana’s birthday is coming … This is a very good present for me.’”

Entering Toronto’s Pearson airport Monday before flying to their new home in Montreal the next day, Keana beamed as someone placed a Montreal Canadiens cap on her head.

“Now we are permanent residents in Canada and we are safe and free,” a bleary-eyed Rodel declared later. “Thank you Canada and Quebec.”

Her eagerness to get here was plain to see when the National Post met mother and daughter on Saturday; their minuscule apartment on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island was already stripped bare, the pair’s worldly possessions stuffed into a couple of suitcases and a handful of packing boxes.

My birthday is coming and Keana’s birthday is coming … This is a very good present for me

Yet their story is bittersweet.

The others who helped Snowden – a single Sri Lankan man and a Sri Lankan couple who have two young children – are still awaiting word on whether Canada will take them as refugees.

And there is a surprising link between them and Rodel that has until now remained under wraps.

Keana is the daughter of Supun Kellapatha, the father of the other two children, he and Rodel having been together before his current relationship.

Photo by Maria de la Guardia

“He loves all three of his children very deeply and those three children love each other deeply,” says Marc-André Séguin, the Montreal lawyer spearheading the effort to bring the families to Canada “We have to ask ourselves, knowing this – and Canada has known this for two and a half years now – are we the type of country that wants to separate children from their families?”