An­nie La­lande's planned ten-day trip to Trinidad next month will in­volve sight­see­ing, and tast­ing this coun­try's sump­tu­ous bake and shark and cur­ry dish­es. But La­lande won't be your typ­i­cal tourist. The Que­bec, Cana­da, na­tion­al will be touch­ing down on T&T soil for a deeply per­son­al and im­por­tant mis­sion. She's search­ing for her fa­ther.

There's lit­tle in­for­ma­tion for La­lande to work with. Here's the ad­ver­tise­ment she pieced to­geth­er for pub­li­ca­tion in lo­cal news­pa­pers:

"Daugh­ter seeks dad

First name Noel/Knol­ly, No­lay/Noln or sim­i­lar.

66-73 years old. Worked in con­struc­tion in On­tario, Cana­da, in 1974.

Had an­oth­er daugh­ter in Trinidad, who would now be in her 40s.

Hooked up briefly with Gabrielle from Hawkes­bury, On­tario.

He or any­one know­ing him can e-mail An­nie at: find­ing_nole@live.com."

It ap­peared that Gabrielle was 24 years old when she met the man who would be La­lande's fa­ther. This will be La­lande's first trip to Trinidad. Her search for her fa­ther was shared with Lor­raine Ros­tant, of Ros­tant Ad­ver­tis­ing, in a se­ries of e-mails and chats with Skype be­tween April 15 and April 24.

In one of those ear­ly post­ings, Ros­tant asked La­lande if there was a spe­cial rea­son for want­i­ng to vis­it Trinidad. To this, La­lande replied: "Ac­tu­al­ly, my trip to Trinidad is a pret­ty im­por­tant one. My bi­o­log­i­cal fa­ther is from there. But when he met my mom, it was very brief and I on­ly have a first name and a coun­try.

"So, the best I fig­ured I could do is go to Trinidad and see the peo­ple, smell the air, eat the food and feel a bit like home in a way. It's crazy, but it needs to be done." La­lande's trip is not on­ly to find her fa­ther, but to un­der­stand her roots. She's al­so search­ing for a sense of com­plete­ness.

This trip was not con­ceived overnight. It's been years in plan­ning. "I'm sure I will be able to sur­vive this ad­ven­ture. I guess that al­so meet­ing some­one from Trinidad and chat­ting with them about their life in the coun­try would be in­ter­est­ing. "I guess there are pieces of my life's puz­zle that will re­main a mys­tery. I had to try and see if I could get some an­swers," wrote a steely-de­ter­mined La­lande.

"I'm a lit­tle shak­en by the fact that I had planned (for years) this trip and it is post­poned (even briefly). I will get there." She had orig­i­nal­ly planned to fly to Trinidad by the end of April, but changed it to mid-May so that her hus­band could be with her. He'd read on­line about T&T's crime sit­u­a­tion and ad­vised that she stay with a fam­i­ly rather than in a strange place by her­self.

To the cou­ple's con­cerns over crime, Ros­tant wrote: "This is a com­plex coun­try. It is not a trop­i­cal par­adise by any means, al­though there are those parts, too." In a note af­ter one e-mail, La­lande couldn't help adding, "NB: By the way, it was nice lis­ten­ing to your ac­cent on your an­swer­ing ma­chine. It will be a great trip!"

La­lande de­scribed her fea­tures: "I have black hair, full lips, round nose. He would def­i­nite­ly be black." She said her moth­er de­scribed her fa­ther as "tall, slim, hand­some black man." About how long he spent in Cana­da, La­lande said to Ros­tant: "When she met him, in June 1973, he had al­ready been in Toron­to. He was maybe trav­el­ling, or just pass­ing through for some rea­son.

"Maybe he de­cid­ed to stay a few days be­cause he met my mom. She didn't say any­thing about him go­ing back to Trinidad, ei­ther at the mo­ment or ever. "But he men­tioned that he had a daugh­ter, I would pre­sume a good rea­son to go back."