by Linnéa Rowlatt, PhD (copyright maintained)                                                         

provided to Active Ukraine on Wednesday, 11 July 2018, for publication on their website

I am the granddaughter of Ukrainian emigrants, and like many in my position, the homeland of Baba and Didou was a mystery of my childhood and for most of my adulthood. I speak French and English – the languages of Quebec – and my grandparents spoke Ukrainian with a little hard-earned English; sadly, the differences of language between generations inhibited much sharing of memory, culture, and tradition. Moreover, the Iron Curtain prevented easy communication or travel to the country. My grandfather never told us the specific reasons he emigrated, and rarely spoke of his early life before he passed away in 1976. As a result of these silences, my cousins and I have known that we had an extended family somewhere in Ukraine, but that was all.

This all changed in 2018 and could not have changed more dramatically. My husband and I were on an extended tour of Europe to celebrate his retirement and when we planned to visit Sweden (country of origin of his maternal ancestors), I decided to look into visiting Ukraine. One of my cousins has a copy of our grandparents' marriage certificate, identifying the villages where both were born and where they married, which was a single lead to follow.

The English language fluency demonstrated by Active Ukraine on their website inspired me to contact them with my goal of visiting my grandfather's village. With their assistance, we organized a week- long excursion including a guided tour of Lviv, a day in the ancestral village, two days of spelunking in the Carpathians and a few days of cross-country skiing, also in the Carpathians. Not my usual style of very independent travel, but I didn't know what to expect from visiting my grandfather's village and assumed a day of poking around would suffice.

The morning of our trip to my grandfather's village, snow was falling. As a Canadian, I am not worried about a little snow, and we started out anyway. A few hours later, we pulled up in front of the town hall and a woman wearing traditional dress gave me a big smile and warm hug, then ushered us into the main room. Four generations of my extended family rose to greet me, with a group of lovely young women singing songs of welcome, declaiming in poetic stanzas I couldn't actually understand, and performing traditional dances. I was offered a large round loaf of bread with salt and the ritual assurances that now, I would never go hungry and live without a home. Then we all adjourned for lunch.

The warmth of my family's welcome will stay with me always. Women of my mother's generation remember their uncle / my grandfather, second cousins are funny and kind, and babies adorn the family tree like ripe plums. I am already planning to return for an extended visit; as well, my profession means I may be able to work nearby for a few months and I am trying to make that happen. For me, visiting this little village in Ukraine meant re-establishing family connections that had been disrupted for almost a century. Closing the circle, so to speak. Touring Lviv, spelunking, and back-country skiing in the Carpathians were great, but the family connection will bring me back.