Imagine knowing next to nothing about your family’s history, until the answers show up one night on your great-aunt’s doorstep.

My whole life, I’ve had fragments of Ukrainian culture. Scattered words and phrases, traditions that put together a small piece of the puzzle. All I knew about my family’s journey to Canada was that “my great-great-grandfather was taken in the middle of the night by the KGB, causing my fifteen-year-old great-grandma, Olga, to flee to Canada in the 40s”. Olga had to break contact with her family in Ukraine for decades out of constant fear for their safety, and eventually wrote to them under a pseudonym. The rest of the story was either lost or seldom spoken about.

I had heard brief comments about my great-great-uncle Orest and his daughter Olya coming to visit BC in the 80s and 90s. My great Grandma Olga had not seen her brother Orest since she fled at fifteen. He was five when she left Ukraine, and she desperately wanted to take him with her. However, Olga’s mom told her that if she wanted to survive, she’d have to go alone. It had been fifty years since the last time they had seen each other.

My mom recounted Olya’s first and only visit as “very exciting… everybody adored Orest, so we were looking forward to getting to know [Olya]. We took her to Whistler… there were family gatherings, we sent them back wearing layers of clothing and packed suitcases”. Of course, this was all before social media, so Olya left with a scrap of paper with the addresses of Olga’s three children: my grandma, and my two great-aunts. That’s how she found us all these years later; with a scrap of paper and a dream to be reunited with my family.

When Olya showed up at my great-aunt Irene’s house late at night 30 years later (this past November), it took a couple of minutes of conversation through the window for Irene to believe who she was talking to. Olya brought a translator who told Irene she was visiting BC on holiday for a month, so naturally, my family quickly coordinated and gathered to spend time with her. We hoped to reconnect and get some answers to our questions, but we never could’ve imagined the stories we were told. (part 1)