New Canadian class: Canada Day 2026

New Canadian class: Canada Day 2026

On August 21,1968, my late wife Anne’s country was invaded by the Soviet Union. The invasion of Czechoslovakia took place the day before Anne’s 10^th birthday. The Soviet Union was intent on putting an end to what is known as the Prague Spring, a period of reform in Czechoslovakia that challenged the prevailing Soviet Communist hegemony.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Prague-Spring

Anne was thoroughly traumatized by this cataclysmic event.

Anne was from a tiny, isolated village in what is now Slovakia, but on August 21, 1968, she was visiting an aunt many miles to the west in the Sudetenland region of the country. Anne and her sister had spent the summer picking hops.

Anne was ethnically German. Her community of Carpathian Germans lived in northwestern Slovakia for over seven centuries. Anne’s native language is a now-extinct German dialect which as unintelligible to speakers of standard German. Slovakia’s German-speaking people were ethnically cleansed after World War Two as a reprisal for Hitler’s crimes. By 1968, her community was dying and was plagued by all the ills of a society being forcibly assimilated, including rampant alcoholism, domestic violence, and various other forms of abuse.

Anne was born on August 22, 1958 with chemical poisoning. Her body was covered with boils from head to toe. Like many other village women, Anne’s mother was forced to work in a toxic furniture factory after the war. All the workers who gave birth lost their babies, except Anne’s mom, who cared for Anne day and night for months in order to keep her alive.

Because of the conditions of her birth and due to the very limited gene pool from which she stemmed, both of which undermined her resilience, Anne suffered from multiple health handicaps well before she was felled by brain cancer, including a chronic lung ailment; severe trigeminal neuralgia and fibromyalgia, resulting in acute pain during windy weather or when she was compelled to wear a face covering; blepharitis (an eye disease); and venous insufficiency. She also had the BRCA1 genetic mutation for breast and ovarian cancer. Almost all the women in her family died of cancer at an early age, including Anne’s mom in 1982.

When the 1968 Russian invasion took place, Anne was forced to hide and cower in a sealed room with all the blinds closed. Some 450,000 Soviet bloc soldiers and approximately 7,000 tanks had invaded her country. When she and her sister finally ventured out of her aunt’s home to seek sustenance, they were told to dive into the ditch if approached by soldiers or tanks. The little girl was terrified of rats and of being trapped in the mud. And she was hundreds of kilometres from her mother, to whom she was so strongly attached.

Many warplanes were buzzing so low overhead that the village people could see the looks on the faces of the Soviet pilots.

The experience of the Russian invasion left Anne with what was identified as ongoing symptoms of post traumatic stress. For obvious reasons, she also suffered from separation anxiety, claustrophobia, and a mortal fear of confinement.

Anne and her sister were finally able to return to her village in August 1968, amidst the occupying Soviet forces. Her family soon emigrated to Canada with no money or possessions. None of them spoke a word of English when they arrived in Vancouver in the fall of 1968.

Upon arrival in Canada, Anne was enrolled in “new Canadian class” with a cohort of recent immigrant and refugee children. She felt tongue tied and profoundly insecure.

Meanwhile her parents and her 18-year-old sister worked long hours at low wages so as to establish a financial toehold in their adopted country.

And of course they sent photos back to the relatives in Czechoslovakia, showing that they were succeeding in the New World.

Look! A new car! Christmas gifts in the midst of copious food and drink! Day trips and vacations!

Meanwhile, her mother cried herself to sleep almost every night, and Anne suffered the slings and arrows of radical displacement.

Anne’s dedication to struggles for social justice and human rights stemmed from her childhood trauma. She was a woman of great strength and courage and I loved her to death.

Anne was a precious gem, a sparkling fragment of the Canadian mosaic. I felt like sharing a slice of her story on Canada Day.