Although seemingly far removed from Stalin’s man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine, the horror of what was happening there was brought home to Canadians in real time by both visitors who travelled to Ukraine and a small number of individuals who with extreme difficulty and good fortune managed to make their way to Canada in the midst of the “Great Hunger” or “Holodomor” of 1932–33.

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The harrowing experiences of the Wolchok family of Toronto are unusual in that they began with their emigration to the U.S.S.R., where they expected to find work and a better life than they had in Canada. They were partly convinced to go to “Russia” by the praise heaped on Stalin’s Five-Year Plan by the famous author George Bernard Shaw, whose July 1931 visit and enthusiastic reception by his Soviet hosts received widespread media coverage in the Western press, including the Toronto Star.