It was July 1996. Our cruise ship, Dniepr Princess, had just tied up dockside in Odesa, Ukraine, the terminus of our two-week Mennonite Heritage Cruise. Kyiv. Odesa. Our cruise director, Walter Unger, had just informed the “pilgrim” passengers that tomorrow, Sunday morning, before flying home on Monday, we would have the option of attending a Ukrainian Baptist church service or a Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral service. My wife Agnes and I immediately opted for the Orthodox service, being lifelong aficionados of that tradition’s beautiful a cappella liturgical choral music. The next morning, I harnessed up for the shore excursion with my small backpack (camera, etc.), and we were off!

Orthodox churches in Ukraine demand “attention.” You stand throughout the two-hour or longer service. As we listened eagerly to the fine choirs intone their invitations to the congregants to respond in kind, Agnes nudged me with her elbow and whispered, “Do you hear that fine soprano voice behind us?” I nodded and at the same time craned my neck around to see where this voice came from. I noted it was from a beautiful, twentyish young woman, and not wanting to be thought of as “ogling,” I quickly turned back, “eyes front.” A moment later, I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder from the young woman! Surely, I thought, she is not making me, an old man with my wife standing next to me, the object of her attention – and then yet in church. My ego proved wrong when, in excellent English, having noticed the small Canadian flag on my backpack, she asked: “Would you like me to interpret the service for you?”

What an offer. We immediately parted ranks and she stepped forward and, in Oxford or Cambridge English, gave us a running account of the service. When it concluded, having established that she was a finalist in English studies at a university in Odesa, we asked her if she might have time and inclination to take us on a short walking tour in the vicinity. She agreed. By this point it was lunchtime back on the ship, and we decided to push our luck further by asking her if she would like to accompany us for lunch on board. We hailed a cab and were soon in the ship’s dining room, where an accommodating hostess set an extra plate and we began to unravel our backgrounds.

That afternoon, the Ungers had scheduled a brief memorial service dockside for some Mennonite young men who had lost their lives while serving as medics during wartime in the Black Sea. I asked our companion – we had by now established her name as Anzhelika Kuznetsova – if with her fine voice she might wish to add to this service in some way. “How?” she asked. Agnes and I recalled attending concerts of the world-famous Don Cossack Choir under Serge Jaroff. They frequently included in their repertoire the liturgical “Otche Nash” (The Lord’s Prayer). I asked Anzhelika if she might feel comfortable gifting us an a cappella rendition of this. She agreed, and the Ungers incorporated this into the event.

That evening we were scheduled to attend an operatic performance of Carmen in the opulent Odesa Opera House. Anzhelika joined us there for a memorable evening before saying our farewells and exchanging addresses. Agnes corresponded with Anzhelika until my wife’s untimely death in 1999. I was unable to find an address to notify Anzhelika of our family’s tragedy until some months later, when I discovered it while rummaging through one of Agnes’ desk drawers. I wrote to her and she responded with sincere empathy. I took up correspondence, but mostly by telephone.

In late 2001 or early 2002, my four children and I agreed to a family heritage trip to Ukraine and Russia. I secured rental of a large van in Kyiv (as none were available in Odesa), but we needed a guide-translator and, importantly, a chauffeur. Anzhelika had in the meantime married an artistic and practical young man named Alexei. She would serve as our guide-translator, and he as our driver, taking us on a ten-day tour of our Mennonite areas of history in Crimea, Molotschna, and the Old Colony, including several overnights in my mother’s birth house in the village of Snihurivka (Schoensee) with all the hospitality only Slavic people so readily offer. Thank you, Maria and Pyotor Novosad.¹

This hospitality was again evidenced in an evening’s dinner at Anzhelika’s grandparents’ house in a village outside Odesa. During the course of the evening, the grandfather (Dedushka Ivan), through Anzhelika’s translation, told us a fascinating family tale. He told us how, in 1929, his father, like so many Ukrainian immigrants, left him and his infant sister with their mother in central Ukraine and travelled to Canada, to northwestern Ontario’s Fort Frances region, to work in the pulp and paper industry and earn enough money to bring his family after him. Sadly, the Second World War and the Iron Curtain made this impossible. Hard work and thrift had permitted him to put aside a tidy amount toward that goal, but fate chose otherwise. He died in Fort Frances. We were shown a picture of the tombstone there with his name, Tony (Trichim) Kiriluk. His “bucket list” – at his age, similar to mine – had one item on it: to do his duty as a sincere Orthodox Christian by physically paying respect to his father’s gravesite. To this end, could we help? My children and I gathered in a huddle and discussed this possibility. Before parting, we eagerly told the family we would try to make it happen.

I contacted Immigration Canada the next winter and was informed of the volumes of documents I would need to submit to support their visa application. They would need to bring these with them when they went to apply at the Canadian embassy in Kyiv, which they did. Regrettably and unfeelingly, when the Canadian visa officer asked about the purpose of their visit, and they replied that they wanted to visit Dedushka Ivan’s father’s gravesite in Fort Frances, they were rudely refused. Their money, non-refundable, and their hopes for Anzhelika, her husband Alexei, and grandfather to visit us were dashed.

Sometimes in my life I have realized in retrospect I should have been less persistent. In this case, however, my persistence paid off. I assembled another folder of documents, and cautiously suggested to Anzhelika that when she applied again next year, she might consider leaving her husband at home. This might alleviate concerns from Immigration Canada regarding the possibility of a family group overstaying their visa. While I was gathering documents, I happened to spot on the history shelves of our local library a book by a University of Alberta academic about Ukrainian immigrants in Alberta, of whom there were so many. I opened it to a page where a paragraph jumped out at me about the importance for Orthodox believers of paying respects at the gravesites of one’s antecedents. I immediately photocopied and referenced this section and included it with the other documents, which I sent to Odesa for Anzhelika to take again to the Canadian embassy in Kyiv, this time accompanied only by Dedushka Ivan.

At 3 a.m. – 9 a.m. in Kyiv – I was awakened by a tearful call from Anzhelika. They had entered the embassy compound, but Anzhelika had not noticed a sign prohibiting cell phones. Security had noticed her cell phone and peremptorily ejected her and told her she would not be readmitted. What to do? I asked if she had the telephone number of the embassy. She read it to me from a sign on the security fence. I called, but before I could finish my request for her re-admittance, I was abruptly told that she was aware of the circumstances and Anzhelika would not be let back in. In the meantime, Dedushka Ivan was inside with the documents, but could not be expected to pursue the application process on his own. Again, what to do?

For many years our family and the Abram H. Harder family had close ties, going back to Ukraine where Abram and my father Gerhard Giesbrecht taught school together. One of the Harder grandsons, Peter Harder (now a senator), was then deputy minister of foreign affairs. I knew him and in fact had his personal home telephone number in Ottawa. I had some idea of how to bluff from some poker card games in my “misspent youth” and decided that, if necessary I would attempt it or even follow through. I called the embassy number again and reached the same official and told her of our family’s close association with her top boss, Deputy Minister Peter Harder, and that I had his personal home telephone number. It was 3 a.m. in Ottawa and I doubted if Peter would welcome a call at this time. There was a pause, and then I was told Anzhelika had already been let back in. Late that day they received their visitor’s visa. They arrived in Toronto later that summer.

We showed them Ottawa, overnighted at our cottage near Huntsville, and then daughter Pat and I with Anzhelika and Dedushka Ivan in tow drove around Lake Superior to Fort Frances. I had already made arrangements there with a relative of Anzhelika to have a local Orthodox priest available for a short graveside service. Everything worked out. I will always remember Dedushka Ivan standing at the graveside with tears silently rolling down his cheeks. He had accomplished what he set out to do and we were happy to have been “bit players” in this drama. We then travelled to Manitoba, where they visited distant relatives in Gimli, and my relatives in the province, and returned home. A church service in our Vineland Mennonite Church, in which they participated, followed, and attendance of a Sunday service in St. George’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church in St. Catharines was arranged. This was their first visit to us, and of course they left for home within the limits of their visa. Dedushka Ivan died in Odesa some years later.

Many small groups of relatives and friends have in subsequent years been shepherded and transported to many destinations in Ukraine by Anzhelika and Alexei.

In June 2016, Anzhelika and her son Yelysei, by this time nine years old, visited us for two weeks. During their stay they participated musically in a garden party at the David and Terri Dick “estate” in Virgil. Yelysei, a budding violinist, entertained us with music from Fiddler on the Roof and became acquainted with my oldest great-granddaughter, Jordan, and spent some time with her at her school in Dunnville.

We have accompanied each other in thought through the many happy and sad episodes in our lives as friends do. The passing of Anzhelika’s Dedushka Ivan and her mother were notable. Yelysei’s progress in school and his musical development, and Alexei’s wonderful artistic creations, which have graced our family spaces and occasionally more public displays, have brought our cultures closer together by the best of grassroots diplomatic means. Yes, and Anzhelika, your vocals accompanied by guitar evoked the long-thought-forgotten echoes of our parents’ stories of Ukrainian seasonal workers’ impromptu folk music sessions.

Yes, and now at my ripe age, I have the prospect of the visit by you, Anzhelika and Yelysei, to take part in the planned October 13, 2018, “Remembering and Thanksgiving” event for the centennial of the cataclysmic event in Russia-Ukraine that propelled our people leaving that part of the world, and now our again being able to stick together in a tie of families.

I hope the harmonies of these two melodies will continue to thrive.

John Giesbrecht worked for the Bank of Nova Scotia and dedicated much time and effort to Mennonite causes. In 2018, he organized an evening of remembrance and thanksgiving for those survived the changes engendered by the 1917 revolution in imperial Russia. He passed away in 2021.

1. Sadly, Maria Novosad was killed by a Russian missile attack on March 23, 2024. ↩︎