My Grandfather

Little was spoken of my grandfather’s exploits while I was growing up. For some reason his life before coming to Canada was a taboo subject. He passed away in 1989 while I was alone with him in his hospital room. His death, like the death of my uncle, had a lasting effect on me.

I spent a great deal of time with my grandfather growing up. He had a workroom in the basement at his house where he fixed things and painted. I’d “make” things out of the odds and ends he had stowed away in green and yellow plastic bins while he painted. His paintings still hang in the house. For as long as I can remember, my grandfather was retired. He made his own cigarettes in a nifty machine that crammed tobacco into filtered cigarette tubes. He used to give me a few quarters for every pack I’d make. They were politically incorrect times, I guess. I lived with my grandparents for a few years, moved away with my mom, and then moved back  there after he’d passed away.

A few weeks after passing away, my grandmother called me into the living room. My grandfather’s death had a most unsettling effect on her; an effect I don’t think she ever really recovered from. Looking back, I think she felt guilty. After sitting down, she pulled something wrapped in a cloth out from beside her. She held it for what seemed like a long time. I am positive that it was difficult for her to hand it over. What she held was a key that unlocked doors she didn’t want unlocked. After a few drawn-out moments, she handed me the wrapped object and told me that it was something my grandfather wanted me to have. I took the cloth wrapped object from her, but didn’t unwrap it like I did presents at Christmas. I knew the object I was holding held more significance than a box of Lego. I asked, “what is it?”, to which she replied after clearing her throat, “it’s your grandfathers old passport”. Still wrapped, I queried, “why did grandpa want me to have this?” There was silence again for a few long seconds. My grandmother was uncomfortable. “Just open it”, she said. I unwrapped the cloth to find a faded purple Czechoslovakian diplomatic passport. It was intact, but it looked old and very used. If it had been a comic book, it would have been almost worthless. But it wasn’t worthless, it was magnificent. The entry stamps depicted a troubled time. There were Nazi swastikas, Soviet hammers with sickles, stamps in Chinese, Arabic, and French. It WAS a historical document. He had travelled and experienced a number of different cultures. The man I had known to just paint and tinker in the basement had seen and done things I could never have dreamt of. I wanted to know more.

As I leafed carefully through the pages, I asked my grandmother why my grandfather had been to so many places. She told me he had been a diplomat and that he had been stationed in a number of places. That was all she said. It was clear she didn’t want to unlock those doors with me, and I knew it would have been futile for me to press her for more information. I later learned, mostly through my mother and other available information (Campbells’s Soup Magazine), that my grandfather had been stationed in Bulgaria, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Russia,  and France, among other places. It was while he was living in France that the Soviets invaded and “took” Czechoslovakia.

A couple of years ago I returned home to Toronto for a visit at Christmas. Because of jetlag, I had more than a few hours in the wee hours of the morning to sift through boxes of old photos that had been packed by the insurance company after a small house-fire that had occurred a couple of years before while I was in University. Among all the things I found and saw was a newsletter that was published by Campbell’s Soup. I forget the exact date of the newsletter, but it was kept because it included a short story about my grandfather.

“When the communists seized power in Czechoslovakia, John was serving in the embassy at Paris. The Communists practically held a gun to his head to force him to return to his homeland and even trumped up false charges to get the Paris police to make him leave France.”

Well it appears that this story of my grandfather was both true and false. It was written during the heyday of the Cold War, so it was sensationalized in some parts, and not sensationalized enough in others. As far as I know, my grandmother, mother, and uncle were with him in France, and while the Soviets did recall him, if it weren’t for a friend of his in the embassy warning him not to return to his homeland, he’d have been dead a long time ago. This is what I know, and this is what makes my grandfather a great man.

Put simply, not because I want to, but because I don’t know much more than what I am stating here, my grandfather provided exit visas to intellectuals, homosexuals, and others wanted for trial and forced labour by the Soviet Union. When the Soviets found out about this, they called my grandfather back as though it were a routine trip back to the homeland. A friend of his at the embassy tipped him off, so instead of heading back to Prague, he sought asylum with the Canadians.

With tickets to a cruise ship in hand, my grandparents, mother, and uncle packed up whatever they could from their house across the road from the Eiffel Tower and headed to Canada. They relocated to a small northern city on the border of Ontario and Quebec called Rouyn Noranda where he worked as a miner.

When my grandparents saved up enough money, they moved to Toronto where my grandfather went to work in the Spice Department at Campbell’s soup. My mom told me that while they lived in Rouyn Noranda, CSIS (Canadian CIA) kept a close eye on him, as they weren’t sure if he was a spy working for the Soviets. The transition from diplomatic life to miner life was hard on my family. My grandparents, especially my grandmother, were die-hard Roman Catholics. If a Jehovah’s Witness came to the door of the house while I lived with my grandparents, my grandfather would chase them down the driveway with a broom as he firmly told them he was a Roman Catholic.

My grandmother never fully forgave my grandfather. He had, after all, in her mind provided exit visas to homosexuals, and as a Roman Catholic, she could not understand why, and that did not make the extreme and sudden change of lifestyle easy.

I remember, as a kid, my grandfather had a specially designed typewriter. I say specially designed because it was designed so that he could type in Czech. I remember that he had a white cardboard box with what I can say today was a manuscript of his life in it. After his death, queries of this box went unanswered, and even when I brought it up recently, I was told that it never existed. Sadly, I think it was destroyed. The unwarranted shame was too much, and while I don’t hold my grandmother responsible for its disappearance, it seems to have disappeared without a trace.

A few years before my grandfather died, he received a letter from the Soviet embassy. The letter was sent to inform him that the Soviet Union no longer had a warrant out for his arrest, and that it was safe for him to travel and visit his family in Czechoslovakia. The letter came too late. Cancer had set in, and it was impossible for him to travel. He was one of 13 siblings, and outlasted all but one of them. I can still remember his smile. It was warm and good hearted. He wasn’t perfect, but in my eyes, he was a perfect grandfather, and I loved him and miss him very much.

There is so much more I want to learn about my grandfather, but as the years wear on, it’s become harder and harder to uncover more information. Perhaps one day, when I have the financial resources available, I will be able to have professionals uncover more, but until then I am happy knowing that despite his religious convictions, my grandfather helped save a number of lives from Soviet persecution. For that, and things a lot closer to home, he is, in my eyes, a great man whose actions should never be forgotten.