The disappointment was palpable.
As the time of Eugene Kim's departure neared last night at Pearson International Airport, the hope of more than two dozen friends gathered for a chance to say a final goodbye to the 8-year-old girl and her mother, Kim Suk Yeung, slowly disappeared.
"I feel sad and depressed. It's very disappointing," said Yuna Park, 11, a family friend. "I wanted to see her to say a very last goodbye, but it turns out the goodbye we said at home was the last one."
Kim was deported to Seoul, South Korea, late last night after losing her refugee appeal before the Immigration and Refugee Board. She elected to take her Toronto-born daughter with her.
Kim had come to Canada on a visitor's visa in 2000. She had been working in a dry cleaner's shop in the Davenport neighbourhood where Eugene was a Grade 2 student at Dovercourt Jr. Public School.
As well-wishers gathered, officials checked in the Kims' baggage, and a Korean Air staffer accepted an armful of gifts provided by the group for the little girl.
Earlier, Eugene and her mother were taken from a West Toronto detention centre before evening visiting hours began, even though their flight was not scheduled to leave until 11:50 p.m.
No explanation was given.
Earlier in the day, Eugene enjoyed one final hour of glorious spring weather – but even that was spent behind the detention centre's high barbed-wire fence.
The little girl, who speaks five languages, wore a purple and pink sundress and a Korean Air satchel around her neck. Her mother said she was relieved Eugene had eaten some noodles for lunch, the first real food the child had consumed since entering the locked-down facility.
Mother and daughter also said their goodbye to the mothers of Eugene's best friends at Dovercourt Jr. Public School, who came to the jail-like setting – in which visitors speak to detainees by phone behind a pane of glass – earlier yesterday.
"This is our country's loss," said a tearful Kathleen Foley, who with sister Marie, tried Friday to persuade Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to reconsider Kim's case.
The president of the Canadian branch of Defence for Children International confirmed to the Star yesterday there was nothing more that could be done to keep the Kims in Canada.
"We had to establish if there was a risk of serious harm to the child and we haven't been able to do that, so there are not sufficient reasons to overturn a deportation order," said Agnes Samler. "The only thing we might have been able to do is an appeal on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, but we have not had a lot of success under the current system."
Yesterday, though, Foley said she tried to stress to Eugene that she and her mother would be on to new adventures back in South Korea, where the little girl has never lived. Kim's parents and a brother live about 1 1/2 hours south of Seoul.
"They need to be together," said Foley. "If that means they have to be together in Korea, then that's the way it needs to be."
With files from Lesley Ciarula Taylor