As the provincial government offers support to Ukrainian refugees who may want to relocate to Newfoundland and Labrador, some Eastern European refugees recall their experiences decades ago in Gander as they fled Soviet countries and took refuge in Canada.
Veronika Martenova Charles, who defected from Czechoslovakia in 1970, said her experience was different from that of Ukrainians fleeing – but there are some similarities.
“The situation is completely different,” Charles said. “There were some casualties, but they were peaceful. We did not have disasters like what is happening now. But the impact on the people leaving is the same.”
Prior to 1968, Charles was enjoying her life in her homeland as a member of a pop band. That all changed when four Warsaw Pact countries — the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, and Hungary — invaded to quell a reform movement.
“There was this utter distrust and shock from the entire population and their lives were turned upside down in a matter of hours. People lost their careers,” Charles said. Her life was not directly affected at the time, but many of her friends chose to leave the country.
“I knew then that I would never be able to see them again because they did not allow you to travel to the West; it ‘s just as if they were dead somehow, because you will never see them again.”
As time went on, Charles began to see more impact on her life.
“When we went to concerts, we drove from many convoys of soldiers and you knew it would never be the same. Like, you could not go to the forest and pick mushrooms because you could meet the soldiers.”
But he kept hoping that Czechoslovakia would return to the country he knew and loved.
That changed when Charles went on tour with her band in Cuba in May 1970 and the new environment – “seeing the blue sky, being on the other side of the world, the ocean and the fresh air” – inspired her to rethink her decision to stay in her country.
Charles lives in Toronto. (Submitted by Veronika Martenova Charles)
The next stop of her band was in the Soviet Union. He did not want to leave, but he knew it would have serious consequences.
“I knew that if I did that, I would never be able to come back because if I came back or even flew somewhere else in Europe and I was intercepted [at] “At a different airport, I was put in jail,” he said. “Leaving at that time was considered treason. Once you leave, that’s it. “You could never go back.”
When her band boarded the plane in Havana, Charles was unsure if he would stop to refuel on the way to the Soviet Union. As fate would have it, it stopped – in the New Earth, a place it had never heard before.
“When he stopped at Gander, I decided, ‘I’m just going to stay.’”
Charles did not tell anyone about her plan to surrender, because he knew they would try to force her to stay on the plane. But passengers were able to wait inside Gander Airport while the plane was refueling, and she saw an opportunity to escape.
“My group was sitting there drinking tea. I just left and saw that there was a door and it said ‘Immigration.’ I went in and told him I did not want to go back on the plane.”
There were initially some difficulties in communicating with immigration officials.
“I knew English because I listened to English pop songs,” Charles said. “Well, I knew how it sounded.”
But he noted that Gander airport officials did not speak in the same way that Elvis sang.
“Nothing sounded like the songs I was listening to. I was thinking ‘Well, where am I?’
However, immigration officials let Charles stay in their office and asked Cuban pilots to clear her luggage. The pilots refused and Charles was left with only her bag and the dress she was wearing.
Travelers overlook a 70-foot mural by Saskatchewan artist Kenneth Lochhead in 1959. As Gander Airport was a major refueling destination for many flights to and from Cuba, the airport became a focal point for Cold War-era apostates. (Gar Lunney / Library & Archives Canada / National Film Council)
Charles ended up spending only one night in Gander. An airport official took her to a hotel to spend the night and the next day, she flew to Halifax, where she stayed at the immigration facility at Pier 21 for four months.
“I beat everyone because I was young. I was a woman. I had no relatives in Canada, and yet I had all these stamps in my passport because we were traveling to Germany and elsewhere, and [the immigration officials] “I could not understand how I got these stamps.”
She said the confusion over the stamps prompted the RCMP to interview her several times, asking if she was a spy. The police provided her with an interpreter – but a Polish one.
“I have no idea how the translation really went,” he said.
Eventually, Charles received a temporary residence permit and was allowed to leave Pier 21. She used an English dictionary to teach the language herself and got a job as a lab assistant at the University of Toronto.
She saved money and eventually studied design at Ryerson University, then became an interior designer and went on to write and illustrate children’s books. Charles later earned a master’s degree from Yale University in Connecticut and earned a doctorate in education from York University in Toronto.
In a tragic upheaval, Charles said, self-denial in Canada indirectly saved her life.
“About a year after I left, my companions were returning home from another tour. And as they were landing at Prague Airport, the plane caught fire and the whole group disappeared.”
In the years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Charles has returned twice to what is now the Czech Republic – but it is not the country he remembers from his childhood.
“It has changed,” he said. “It was interesting to walk the streets as a child. It used to be nice, but now it’s a different place.
“Charles Bridge with these statues became an important tourist place, but when I was there, I just sat there with my friends next to these statues and we talked at night and no one else was there.”
Charles Bridge in Prague is depicted in March 2021. Charles says that the Czech Republic is not the country he remembers from his childhood. (David Cerny / Reuters)
Charles said she wrote about her own experiences as a refugee in a children’s book entitled The Land Beyond the Wall. “I tried to express how it feels to come to a place where you do not know the language and you do not know anyone.”
“What is happening now with the Ukrainian refugees reminds her of how everything changed for her in 1968,” she said.
“All these people are marked by a life,” he said. “It brings me back when the tanks arrived in Prague and the absolute shock of everyone. I feel that.
“I’m really sick and sad … All these mothers with children who leave their husbands behind, not knowing if they will ever see them again. Even if they could go back, what will they go back to? Just ruined land. It ‘s just incomprehensible.” .
Luben Boykov, in the center, is depicted in 2016 with two other Bulgarian artists who surrendered to Gander, Ellie Yonova and Vessela Brakalova. (Heather Barrett / CBC)
In February 1990, Luben Boykov surrendered from Bulgaria to Gander with his wife, Elena Popova, and their two-year-old daughter. Bulgaria at that time was similar to what Russia is now, he said.
“It was still under Soviet rule, the communist, totalitarian, authoritarian regime. Very limited human rights, civil liberties, basically a classic communist country. So we decided to get away from that.”
Boykov and his family saw their opportunity in 1989, when they were allowed to apply for passports. Under communist rule, he said, Bulgarians were not allowed to have passports and were not allowed to travel abroad. As soon as they received their passports, they started making plans to leave the country.
But the only places that could go outside Bulgaria were other communist countries, but they heard that some flights going to Cuba had to land in North America to refuel.
“We decided to take a risk and buy tickets to Havana, pretending we were going on holiday.”
They boarded a Soviet airline flight from Moscow to Havana. Boykov said the flight crew was secret about the supply details.
“They were allowed to be flight attendants, which meant they were politically loyal to the regime. And they knew very well then that all the passengers were possible distancers. So they did not tell us anything.”
As the plane began to land, Boykov looked out the window and although he did not know where they were, he knew it was not Havana.
“When the plane started to descend and came closer to the surface, we noticed that there was snow on the ground, so we knew we were not in Cuba.”
Almost all we knew about Newfoundland was the fact that it was an island, it was part of Canada – and we also knew about Newfoundland dog.- Luben Boykov
As the plane landed, they had no idea where they were.
“Then we saw a Canadian flag unfurled in the background above the terminal building and we knew we were in Canada. Then, when the plane approached, we saw Gander, so we knew we were in New Earth.”
Before landing on New Earth, he said, he did not know much about the place.
“Almost all we knew about Newfoundland was the fact that it was an island, it was part of Canada – and we also knew about the Newfoundland dog.”
Although I felt good that they knew they had landed in Canada, he said, there was still a battle ahead of them to get off the plane.
“They did not allow us to disembark. So we had to do it by force in our case.”
Quarrel on the plane
The flight attendants and some other passengers …