To Lvov: The Scandalous Roots of One's Slavic Past

St.Cyrill, St.Catharines

To Lvov. Which station
for Lvov, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew
gleams on a suitcase, when express
trains and bullet trains are being born. To leave
in haste for Lvov, night or day, in September
or in March. But only if Lvov exists,

- Adam Zagajewski

Before leaving for Europe, it was always my best intention to visit the ancestral countries of both my parents. 

As it turned out, there would be familial links to my father's side, relatives I could stay with in Holland, birthplaces I could see and visit and stories I could hear about. Naturally, there would be photo albums and memories. 

This would pose no problem. 

Unfortunately this wouldn't be the case when it came to my mother's roots; I had nothing to go on. 

To compensate, I decided to do my own research and familiarize myself with the basics of my mother's culture. I bought a book about Ukraine and the Lonely Planet's guide to Eastern Europe. I read the novels of Mikhael Bulgakov. I even went online and investigated potential cities to visit such as Lviv (Lvov), Odessa and Kiev. I checked out accommodations and room prices through AirBnB; overall, they seemed fairly reasonable. I looked at trains and buses. I didn't foresee any major troubles in getting there and exploring.

Time is crucial in everything and I suppose the one thing that deterred my search for maternal roots when I arrived in Europe was the presence of the FIFA Cup. This would be an issue. In Munich, during Oktoberfest for instance, prices for rooms skyrocket to take advantage of the eager beer-swilling tourists. I expected the same from Ukraine and of Poland, the two countries that would be co-hosting the games.

Despite my research and intentions, despite my closeness on my trip, being at one point a mere hour away from the Polish border in Berlin, I never managed to forge a route into that mysterious, Slavic side of my identity. In truth, I will say I was a little disappointed in this regard, not so much in myself but circumstances. I had studied Russian for a year and before finalizing plans, daydreamed about walking through streets where the Cyrillic writing would be everywhere. I had been looking forward to making my way east, seeing the churches and sitting down in a restaurant, eating borsch and cabbage rolls in the land where it had first been concocted.   

Dostoevskyhaus, Baden Baden, Germany

Thankfully, there were familiar vestiges and reminders of Slavic culture in Germany. In Baden Baden, many of the tourist shops inform visitors that the staff within speak German, English and Russian. The woman who welcomed me at the Friedrichsbad spoke Russian. Not only this, the guiding signs in the facility are written in the three languages with French being the fourth. 

Outside the spa, just around the corner is the Dostoevskyhaus, named for Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) The great Russian novelist had visited the city with his wife Anna in August, 1867 during a tour of Europe. He gambled at the famous casino and based a novel on his erratic and hopeless experiences there (today the lower floor of the 'haus' is a real estate office). 

A peer of the troubled writer, Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) loved the city and urged fellow writers to join him there. There is a bust of him on the Lichtentaler Allee. 

Baden Baden famous Russian Church

Baden Baden also boasts its famous Russian Church as does Leipzig in Eastern Germany. 

And yet somehow, it was good but not good enough. Back in Canada now, I continually return to my pictures of The Netherlands and smile and think back nostalgically to my hours there. I have pictures of where my father lived in Amsterdam. I visited Haarlem where my Oma was born, having biked its streets and drank its beer. Strangely, despite all these beautiful experiences, it feels in-balanced as if I had been unfair to a part of myself and favoured one side over the other. 

Though maybe I have to come to terms with what I know and will never know because that's the way it has always been. When I think of the research I've done, my interest in Russian literature and language, it has always been my effort to reach out into the hazed past as opposed to have been brought up in it. A lot of course, has to do with my mother.

My mother's side of the family has so little to do with their heritage. Unlike my father, she, in her adult life had little contact with her parents, my grandfather dying when I was little, my grandmother living on the other side of the country. I can count on my two hands the times I sat with them and had a conversation. A solemn contrast to what I experienced with my father's family. We lived just around the corner from my Opa and Oma. I never heard Russian or Ukrainian spoken but I listened to Dutch conversations several times a week. I ate gouda cheese and other Dutch delicacies daily, thanks in part to the import store on Ontario St., Ramakers. 

It was only at Christmas that I had perogies and cabbage rolls at my aunts. 

My mother only recently told me that she had let herself become 'Broerse-fied', allowing her husband's Dutch culture to take pride of place before hers. For her, the past was laden with bad memories and misplaced dreams, family feuds and conflicts, ubiquitous skeletons creeping out of the closet. This is the reason why we never had a samnovar or Ukrainian decorations in our home and instead had teak furniture - wall unit, tables and so forth then popular in Scandinavia and those households with Northern European backgrounds. I remember the Delft tiles and the yellow, wooden clogs near the window. I remember the Breughel and Van Gogh prints in the hallway and living room.

Perhaps this is the reason she remembers so very little of her parents' world, where they come from. I learned in my late twenties from my eldest aunt the true origins of my grandmother and grandfather.

From what I have gathered, my grandmother's mother, Sophie (София) came from Western Ukraine, the city of Ternopil (Тернопiль), two hour east of Lviv (Львiв). Her mother died when Sophie was five. Her father passed on some seven  years later. She moved to Saskatchewan in 1919 with her step-parents, marrying my great-grandfather, Max (Максим) soon after.

My grandmother, Josie, was born in 1923 followed by her two sisters, Anna (1926) and Marrianne (1927). When she was four years old, her father killed himself. 

There is some speculation regarding Max's suicide but many believe he killed himself because he had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. Others say it was the diagnosis compounded by depression. He learned that his wife was cheating on him. Sophie believed she didn't have much time to find a new husband and should start sooner. Without the support of his wife, Max slit his throat, feeling utterly alone in the world and certainly died feeling both betrayed and ashamed.

Following the funeral, Sophie married a man named Daniel (Данaйл), also of Ukrainian origin. Sophie had two more daughters, Olga and May. But apparently Dan couldn't keep it in his pants and made 'attempts' on my grandmother (whether my grandmother was raped or not has not come to light). Sophie, knowing that Dan couldn't corral his darker habits sold the family cow and gave my grandmother the money to start a new life in Toronto, Ontario. 

There she met my grandfather. Pyotr (Пиотр) came from Russian stock. His family, it is said left Russia because of the Revolution and headed south to Buchovina (Буковина), a region now split between present day Ukraine and Romania. (In those days, the borders were tenuous. It is said that a man could have been born in the Austro-Hungarian empire, have been of Ukrainian background, been Polish and then an Ukrainian citizen and not have left his hometown during the eighty years of his life.)

My grandfather's family was broken up because my great-grandfather headed to Canada to start anew. He told his family (two sons, a daughter and wife) he would find relatives, find work, buy a home and send for them. Unfortunately, upon settling, he fell in love with another woman in Fort Francis, Ontario. After making his way with his family across the Atlantic, down the St.Lawrence, my grandfather came to seek out his father on a cold winter's night. His father welcomed him at the door with chilling words: "I never want to see you again in my life" and slammed the door on his eldest son. 

Pyotr's mother found work as a maid in Toronto. My grandfather worked a slave labor-like job in Port William. Eventually his mother saved enough money and was able to bring her three kids together.

Strange to think that my own paternal great-grandmother warned my future grandmother, Josie not to marry her son. There are even family tales that she cursed her eldest to a life of hardship and pain. 

Who believes in curses anyway? Josie married Pyotr. They had five kids, my mother the youngest.

Recently, my mother's only brother died. He was in late sixties. We weren't surprised. His wife of over thirty years passed away last year due to cancer. With couples who've lived together and loved each other so long, it is only inevitable that one goes right after the other.

St.George's, St.Catharines

The last time I saw my uncle I was twelve. I know nothing of him, just like the family. Instead, what I have to go on are the traces, the disappearing footprints in the snow that lead here and there, all them found through my own inclinations, following them, unsure if I want to keep going. I suppose this is the reason I add a veneer of myth to my life as if it might add some colour and depth to the little I have gleaned. Maybe I'm in love with the illusion of the culture, the far away traditions. Winter nights when I still lived in St.Catharines, I would take a walk through the Facer neighborhood, passing St.George and St.Cyril, looking up at the solemn, noble facades, up at the snow-whisked domes, looking through the glass front doors and dreaming about the cultures that built them, about the languages that trembled behind their walls.

When my grandfather died, the service was at St.George. The eulogy was in Ukrainian. My mother sat in the church, staring up at the icons not knowing what it all meant but also not wanting to. He was a cruel man, a closet alcoholic, the kind whose moods changed and out of nowhere he would pull out the strap because it made him happy to beat one of his kids. He was the kind of scheming man who burned the family home to collect insurance money. The insurance reps suspected this and only gave my grandfather a quarter of what the house was worth.

For my mother, he burned her favourite home, the place she most loved. 

But what can a man become, really? My grandfather walked away in the frosted night from his father, heeding his words and in turn became the father he despised. It could have been the curse. Later, my uncle stood by his father's tombstone, having waited hours for the grave diggers to rectify their mistake. They had dug up the wrong plot. The director of the cemetery was quite embarrassed, apologizing to my mother and aunt. For my uncle, it simply meant standing out in the March cold, smoking cigarette after cigarette, making sure the man who had tormented his life, the man who withheld any iota of kindness was six feet deep and in the right place.

And here I was, out on snowy evenings in St.Catharines, romanticizing a world so many try to escape from.

My friend is married to a Ukrainian woman. Her father, like my grandfather was a cruel man, he too an alcoholic. He had a past. He managed to elude Stalin, escaping a P.O.W. camp with his wife in Central Europe, making their way to France then Canada. In St.Catharines he helped build St.George's. He also went on to father three kids, my friend's wife the youngest.

To this day none of them talk to each other.

It is almost the same with my mother, the lines of communication are tenuous.

As for Nana, Josie, the one who had been the four-year old girl, the one who was taunted and teased by her classmates because her dad committed suicide, well, we fear she is near her end. Though, she's always been close to it. When I was living in British Columbia, she tried to kill herself with pills. I remember the hospital room in Surrey and how she spent the whole time wandering the halls, unable to talk to either me or my mother. She lived longer than her father but was never quite there. I'm sure at her funeral, there will be no need for a high collar to hide her wound.

When she goes, she'll leave nothing, her eldest daughter having drained her bank accounts to pay for her whims. The family has known about this, they talk about it but they do nothing. What can you do? I'm sure my aunt is still angry at her mother for not heeding Pyotr's mother's advice.

And when Josie goes, well, I'm sure another aunt will be in there to pick at the scraps when she is gone, looking for anything of value. That's what she did when my grandfather died. An aunt who once appeared on Oprah, who preached no sex before marriage. How ironic when her own teenage daughter was buying condoms at a pharmacy the week before.

Perhaps my oldest aunt is doing all of us a favour. Who wants anything left? When my grandfather died, his will was dispersed. All that remained was an 'education fund' but we only found out about this years later when I was going to school. Of course, with my mother's family, that $25,000 disappeared in one fail swoop, one aunt feeling she knew who 'deserved' the money and who didn't. (None of it went to those who were going to school, however...)

So yes...this is family. This is the legacy...

Maybe I'm glad there was nothing in the Ukraine for me to look for. I guess when I think of it, I'm glad I never made my way east, nothing further than Berlin, that I saw enough cultural icons in Baden Baden and Leipzig to satisfy my longings for a Slavic past. Beyond that, what could there be? Empty hopes, I'm sure. 

Nothing in Lvov, nothing in Ternopol or Odessa.

It's better when it's just a dream, empty churches I once passed in the winter, seeing my own breath disappear in front of me.