away from Toronto, Lill moved north to Kenora, Ontario in 1977 where she worked as a mental health consultant. "That was a silly job for me because I had no experience and I wasn't that type of person," Lill told an interviewer later. "But I did it for six months, basically trying to ascertain whether a Canadian Mental Health Association would be useful in Northern Ontario. Well, that's sort of like saying, 'Would an aspirin be useful in Bangladesh?'" Lill concluded there were already 44 associations in Kenora, none of them effective in dealing with the socio-economic problems that resulted in alcoholism and violence. After quitting her mental health job, Lill began working for a native newspaper, flying to remote reserves where she "spent a lot of time sleeping on floors in nursing stations." Her experiences in northwestern Ontario changed her life. "I began to see the whole level of community relationships between natives and whites in the north, and the historical abuse of power, the racism," she told a journalist in 1998. "It was the first time I had ever seen that, and I was shocked." At age 26, Lill began writing stories based on her experiences—stories that would later form the basis for her one-woman play, The Occupation of Heather Rose. Lill also worked as a journalist for CBC Radio in Winnipeg before moving to the Manitoba capital in 1979 where she produced radio documentaries for Our Native Land, a national, CBC Radio program about Canada's indigenous peoples. One of her documentaries, Who is George Forest? won an ACTRA Award in 1981. Her radio drama, Shorthanded also won an ACTRA that same year. In 1982, her first play, On the Line was staged in Winnipeg. It was based on a strike by immigrant women working in the garment industry and has been variously described as one-sided and propagandistic. According to one account, Lill's businessman father suggested that in successful drama, even the villains have to be real, a piece of advice that she apparently took to heart. Lill met CBC producer, Richard Starr in Winnipeg and they married in 1982, moving east to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick before settling in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia with their sons Samuel and Joseph. Samuel has Down's syndrome and both Lill and Starr are well known for their advocacy on behalf of people living with disabilities. Member of Parliament Lill's first formal