07/15/2025
July 14, 2025 marked 11 years since this land occupation began. Normally the date is one for celebration with friends, this year was a quiet and rainy day at home. My good old friend and tireless supporter, former Canmore Councillor John Kende passed away at home last month. He will be missed dearly by those few, lucky and interesting enough to John for a regular meet up to discuss policy and politics.
I first encountered the man with the heavy Hungarian accent as a boisterous questioner of candidates during my 2010 run for Council. When a pompous local twit playing grand moderator made fun of the man with the accent I spoke up and called for respect. John took note of my actions that day. I did not know at the time that ridicule was a regular occurrence when John spoke up. As a Canmore Councillor in the 1990s John stood almost alone in refusing to be bought by Canmore's industrial real estate and tourism complex. An independent mind doesn't endear one to back room boys with big plans.
Later, I would be formally introduced to the man with the accent by his wife Eva, a friend who was a regular at the Migratory Words writers group. They were inseparable and made an incredibly interesting pair to talk political shop with. When Eva passed away it was John who asked me to speak at her celebration of life. He said people still came up to him years after to comment on that speech. Eva made it easy for me by leaving behind a book of short stories from her life growing up behind the iron curtain.
This post will be dedicated to dearly departed friends who have both left an indelible mark on this writer. They fled tyranny in search of freedom and found each other. They were proud Canadians and fierce democratic citizens and now I shall miss them both.
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Citizen Eva, Refugee
Eva Kende was a scientist, a chemist by trade, with a rational mind and not prone to superstitious or religious sentiments, but I don't think she'll mind if I feel blessed and grateful to have known her and called her friend.
This is just a brief list of Eva’s first career: After graduation she moved to Toronto and worked at the Princess Margaret Hospital, Hospital for Sick Children, Biochemistry Department at the University of Toronto. Later she would move west, Pharmacology Department at the University of Manitoba, University Hospital and Provincial Labs in Edmonton, Gastroenterology Research Lab and In-Vitro Research Lab at the University of Calgary.
Eva was also a writer and author in her second career. Her cookbook, Eva’s Hungarian Kitchen has sold over 23,000 copies so far and is currently in its 8th printing.
This piece focuses on Growing up Behind the Iron Curtain, a collection of stories from Eva’s early life as a child, student and eventually refugee. I encourage everyone to read it. I believe Eva’s little book should be mandatory reading for students and all lovers of freedom and democracy.
War
Eva was born in Budapest in the fall of 1941, surrounded on all sides by the madness of the Second World War and her country allied with N***s. One of Eva’s first memories is of the hated S.S. stealing her little bicycle. "The goddamned SS stole my red bike" were the first words Eva ever said to me. Those few words left a distinct impression on me right away. I knew right then and there that we were going to be friends.
The war would eventually role over her city and her home. The Germans occupied their former ally as the war turned against them. The last N***s offensive in the Eastern theatre would take place in and around Budapest. Somehow Eva survived, but the war took away her beloved father, so Eva grew up amongst a fatherless generation, like countless European children.
Liberation
Liberation arrived at the hands of the Red Army in 1945. This is but one of Eva’s memories of that time. Needless to say, these young Red Army soldiers left a distinct impression on little Eva: pg. 22, pg. 26.
"One day, my grandmother and mother took me to the zoo. Although some of the buildings had damage, and I presume some of the animals had perished, it was open to the public. As soon as I saw the little carriage drawn by a dwarf pony, I wanted to ride it. Being four, I didn't understand that the carriage belonged to the photographer, and you had to pay for the photos to have the ride, a short trip around the zoo. The price was a sum, far beyond our means. When my begging met with a firm no, I threw a tantrum. Two very young Russian soldiers came over, wanting to know what was wrong with the devotchka. Mother explained in pantomime that I wanted a pony ride, but we had no money. Before my tears dried, strong hands lifted me onto the seat behind the pony and I found myself wedged between the two young men to ride around the zoo. From my perch, I looked around triumphantly, like a queen, beaming at the other children who gaped in envy at my good luck. The photographer took the two pictures the Russians had paid for and printed them. They kept one copy and handed the other to my mother. Prompted by Mother, I thanked them profusely. I still have the picture; it's among my most prized possessions. I often wonder where the second picture is now and how those soldiers remember that incident; when far from home, perhaps missing desperately their own children or siblings, they made a little girl very happy."
Like almost everyone of her generation, Eva was raised and cared for by her mother Irene and was always surrounded by several strong, courageous and independent minded women like her grand mother Rozsi, aunt Boske and grandmother’s cousin Frida, Nene to Eva. These women are constants throughout the book.
Eva’s grandmother opened her own business in Budapest in 1901 when she was only 23, making ties for businessmen. It was illegal for a woman to own a business in Hungary at that time, but that didn't stop Rozsi for a second. She put the business in her brother’s name. Reading Eva’s book, one can clearly see who she got her s***k, determination and zest for life from.
So, the war ended. It was late 1945/46 and the N***s were gone, and the Red Army soldiers began to go home. And there was peace and relative freedom for a little while. But the Hungarian Stalinists stayed, for almost five decades, with all the commissars, secret police, repressions and propaganda that authoritarian Communism could offer. Tyranny of the political Right replaced almost immediately by tyranny of the political Left.
Eva’s education under Communism started and despite years of indoctrination she always thought for herself. People living under Stalinism were afraid to speak openly in public for fear that an illegal opinion should get them called in for questioning by the authorities, imprisonment, forced labour or worse. So smart folks kept quiet and little Eva noticed this. Eva had a free mind from the beginning, and it stayed that way throughout her life.
Eva loved reading just about anything she could get her hands on. She read the daily news paper before school when she was old enough. She read her grandmothers books. She read about science, geography and architecture and soaked up knowledge like a sponge. School was difficult for Eva though, not because of her marks, but because of her social class. That was the middle class, which was viewed with suspicion by the state. A single mom and her little girl living in near destitution were considered potential enemies of the state. Eva was not one to give up though and she earned respect and high praise from her teachers.
She adored summer vacations and loved Budapest Castle Hill district and collected plant samples for school in the Buda hills where the little pioneer train ran pg. 117
"At least once a year we were able to ride the narrow-gauge Young Pioneer train built in the Buda Hills. The train meandered through the lovely hills, stopping at several stations where we could buy refreshments and eat our packed sandwiches. Children ten to fourteen years old operated the train. We watched as smartly uniformed kids seriously gave orders over the telephones in the glass-enclosed control room of the station, throwing big, important switches and tapping out messages in Morse code. We could even send a postcard or a telegram from the station's post office where young postmasters and postmistresses worked....
My husband was one of the Young Pioneer Train staff. His memories of those days are the highlight of his childhood. On every trip to Hungary, we must hop on the train, still run by children, for a sentimental journey. He insists on talking to the ten-tear-olds working there and telling them he was one of the young controllers when the train opened in 1948. They stare at him, speechless. It seems like ancient history to them."
Hungarians may have kept quiet publicly in those middle years of the 20tn century but, at home and in private many quietly listened to Radio Free Europe and Voice of America. They listened to decadent western music and news from beyond the curtain, and many dreamed of freedom, including Eva. The fall of 1956 would change everything for Her. She was 15 years old.
Revolution:
The revolution of '56 began with students marching peacefully for basic rights we take for granted today. People came out into the streets of Budapest and talked openly about politics with each other for the first time in a decade without fear. The Regime fled the city in shock and horror at the size of the uprising. Everywhere students and citizens marched, workers councils were organized, while a remarkable and highly democratic provisional government was established by the people of Budapest. Hope for change was in the air.
Less than 40 years later another generation of students would go into the streets of almost every Communist country in Europe, I watched them on television, I was 17, and those students and workers would win their revolutions, but not in '56. It all ended a few short weeks after it began, with the revolution. it's youthful government and its students crushed beneath the tracks of Soviet tanks.
Freedom bound:
Eva’s mother could see what was coming and decided for both of them right then and there that now was the time to get out of Hungary before reprisals began.
On December 19th, 1956, Eva and Irene joined another group of soon to be refugees and boarded a train headed towards a small village on the Austro-Hungarian boarder. The group arrived at dusk and disembarked and then made their way, for what seemed like hours to Eva, through the darkness, across rutted snow-covered farm fields, and through the Iron Curtain. Eventually someone spotted the faintest speck of blue streetlights. There was disbelief in the group at first, but then everyone could see it. This was the Austrian village of Deutsch Kreutz. Eva wrote that it was the prettiest sight she had ever seen. In Hungary, all the streetlights had been yellow. Now this little blue village beckoned in the darkness and hinted at freedom beyond.
Next day they travelled to Vienna. In Vienna they visited the Canadian Embassy and after a few days and a cursory medical exam they were sent to the Canadian refugee camp at Wiener Neustadt, where transport to Canada would be arranged.
At dawn on January 23rd, 1957, they boarded the train which would take them to the German port of Bremen haven, to sail to Canada. Eva’s book notes her first and highly symbolic bottle of Coca Cola. Her ship set off, soon passing the white cliffs of Dover and taking Eva to freedom.
Each evening on the ship there was a banquet followed by a dance, and so Eva, fifteen years old, danced her way across the Atlantic, for that is what people who are free for the first time in their lives do. Almost 100 years ago the American Feminist and Anarchist Emma Goldman said to the Communists of her day "If I can't dance, then I don't want any part of your revolution". And Eva wanted to dance.
I do not envy the political prisoner his prison or the slave her shackles or the refugee their suffered tyranny, but I do envy their unquantifiable and inexpressible joy on that day when they know they are free people in a free land.
The refugee reminds us, the citizens of these free societies, that everyone of us has a sacred duty to preserve these imperfect promised lands in perpetuity, so that the beacon light of hope and freedom should not vanish from this fair Earth.
Eva and Irene arrived in Halifax on the afternoon of February 4th, 1957, spent the night on the ship and were processed through Halifax's famous Pier 21 immigration facility. Four days later Eva was home in Winnipeg. She was 15 and had a ten-word English vocabulary and served as official translator for her fellow refugees.
In six years Eva would learn the English language well enough to complete her high school matriculation exam and graduate university at the top of her class. She was working her first research job in Toronto when she met her lifelong dance partner John on a blind date. Three months later they were engaged and married by the next spring. They danced all over this country, both having astonishing careers and raised Latsy and eventually called Canmore home permanently.
Eva loved being a Canadian citizen. She expressed this love through her writing (words), volunteering (deeds) and by being politically active (vote). 2500 years ago, the citizens of the first democracy at Athens gathered once a year to publicly swear an oath to preserve their democracy by word, by deed and by vote. Eva followed in their steps instinctively. Bravo Eva.
This country welcomed her to become Canadian, but never asked her to stop being Hungarian. She loved Canada for this simple act of respect. Our country is young and far from perfect, but we have a freedom and peace many on Earth can only dream of. Imperfect freedom is always better than tyranny.
Eva's Thank you to Canada:
I will leave the end of this piece for the last words from the last page, of the last chapter of Eva’s wonderful little book. pg. 176
"There is a subtle and often blurry difference between immigrants and refugees. An immigrant has consciously planned to leave his or her home and settle in a different country. There was time to choose, read up and familiarize oneself with the country, it's culture and language. The refugees, on the other hand, were uprooted suddenly and thrust into a strange land, usually following some dramatic, stressful events in their birth-land. Each refugee has a story to tell about his or her path to and arrival in Canada. The details differ, but the message is usually the same.
The majority of refugees are the greatest flag-waving patriots in Canada. We came to this country in the wake of turmoil and danger in our homeland; penniless, destitute, still in mourning and in shock of having lost our home, friends and relatives in the span of a few turbulent weeks. We were confused, scared of our future, and found our dignity in tatters. We arrived in Canada to find caring people, helping hands and a warm welcome. Through the years, we tried to achieve the success we dreamed of, succeeding at times and failing at others, but we knew this great country, Canada, gave us the freedom to try again, in any way we desired. Here, we could keep our culture and pride of ethnic origin, yet become Canadian and raise our family in guaranteed peace. Show me another country that provides all that and asks nothing in return for its hospitality.
If you see a former refugee stand a little taller or have shiny eyes during the singing of "O Canada", don't be surprised. That's our way of saying, "Thank you, Canada! We love you!"
We love you too Eva.
james r louden
Canmore, 2019
