Gander, Newfoundland was made famous internationally with the hit Broadway musical Come From Away. The Tony Award-winning blockbuster centered around how the town handled the massive influx of stranded airline passengers impacted by the grounding of flights after the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001. What a lot of people don’t realize is that Gander was able to handle that crisis in part because of its experience as the site of defections of tens of thousands of refugees from Eastern Bloc countries during the Soviet era. Some days more than 300 people would claim refugee status in Gander. More than 3000 Bulgarian refugees defected while they were en route through the Gander International Airport. And among them were artists Luben Boykov and Elena Popova. In 1990 the young couple was just starting a family in Sophia, Bulgaria when they made the life-changing decision to board a plane for Cuba under the guise of going there to a holiday. But their real plan was to defect once the plane landed in Gander to refuel. In this final episode of season three of Countless Journeys, Luben and Elena share their harrowing tale of fighting their way off that flight, uncertain of what lay ahead. “The plane started descending,” says Luben Boykov. “We had no idea where we were. Because no information was given, no PA announcements, nothing.” “I was choking. I had tears in my eyes. I couldn't breathe,” recalls Elena Popova. “I was trying desperately to take a breath of air and I did, and it was minus 20. I could feel the cold air, but it was the freshest breath of air I ever took.” The couple would go on to make Newfoundland their home for close to thirty years, where they raised their daughters and created art that is among gallery and private collections throughout the world.
Luben:
From the moment we met in eighty-one, it has always been on our mind to leave the country and move to the free world.
PP:
Sculptor Luben Boykov defected to Canada from Bulgaria in 1990 with his wife, painter Elena Popova.
The iron curtain was just starting to crumble.
And for a young couple who were born under Communism...
... who were the children of artists whose creative lives had been limited by Soviet politics...
the pull of the West was strong.
Their journey out of Bulgaria was a harrowing one.
Under the guise of a vacation to Cuba, Luben and Elena and their baby girl boarded a flight that they hoped would stop in Canada to refuel.
And when it did, they made their move.
Luben
And that’s when the Russian passengers stood in our way, and started screaming that we're traitors of the communist ideal, that we're defectors. And there's no chance in hell we're leaving this plane.
And that's when a brawl basically exploded because we were really committed to, to fight for our lives.
Elena
Lubin disappeared. And I said I'm taking off to Cuba if I don't fight my way through. So I had to.
PP:
The Gander International Airport was the site of tens of thousands of defections from Soviet bloc countries in the 1980s and 90s.
Some days more than 300 people would claim refugee status in Gander. An incredible number.
Most moved on to other provinces, but Luben and Elena fell in love with the province where they first touched down in the free world.
Luben:
The Newfoundland environment, natural environment, and the landscape really impacted my work. I was surrounded by the harsh landscape and weather of Newfoundland. And it somehow permeated me.
Elean
I was ready to, to start a new life and to, to be happy again. We had a white canvas in front of us. And for an artist, this is a new beginning.
PP:
Luben and Elena’s story is coming up on Countless Journeys.
MONTAGE
PP:
Welcome to Countless Journeys from the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. I’m Paolo Pietropaolo.
And producer Tina Pittaway joins me - hi Tina!
TP:
Hi Paolo!
PP:
Tina, hearing about that situation faced by Luben and Elena on the plane, and just trying to imagine what it could possibly have been like to realise they’d have to fight their way off the plane - and to be have the courage to do it - whew - it’s a story that sounds like it is straight out of Hollywood.
TP:
Yes that airplane confrontation is absolutely harrowing.
And to think that thousands and thousands of others found themselves in Gander Newfoundland throughout that era in very similar circumstances is pretty mind blowing.
PP:
It’s a bit of a forgotten part of Gander’s history, now, isn’t it - or if not forgotten, then lesser known - because of what’s happened since that time.
Gander was really made famous by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, when so many flights were rerouted there. And then it was made even more famous by the Broadway musical Come From Away, which recounts that time in Newfoundland.
TP:
And it was in part Gander’s experience with welcoming so many Soviet-era refugees that helped in some ways prepare them to handle that crisis.
PP
Tina, you’ve put together a documentary to bring us behind the scenes of just one of those thousands of stories that have their pivot point in Gander. It’s a very tumultuous and gutsy journey of immigration - the story of sculptor Luben Boykov and painter Elena Popova. You spoke with Luben and Elena recently.
TP:
I did. They split their time between Canada and Sisily, Italy now. They were in Sisely when we spoke. In fact you will hear a tiny bit of an echo because they are surrounded by beautiful Italian tile floors throughout their home.
PP:(React)
Aha, the acoustics of Italian architecture. I’ll try to picture that when I hear the echo.
TP:
As artists they are used to opening themselves up to the world through their art, and they were just as generous in conversation
PP:
I’m looking forward to hearing this documentary -
Tina, thanks so much.
TP:
Thanks Paolo.
Music
Elena:
It was a love at first sight. It was the very first day, the very first minute I entered the university. And I saw this very, very tall man, no hair - just coming out of military service - with a dart in his, in his hand and our eyes met. I said to myself, oh my God.
Luben:
Elena was hell bent and so was I to focus on art and studies and avoid any distractions, particularly the ones associated with emotional attachments.
So both of us had this, uh, program in our heads that basically came to a sudden crash. The moment our eyes, our eyes met and our eyes engaged. And, uh, that, that was pretty much it. And this was 41 years ago.
Elena:
My name is Elena Popova. I'm 60 years old. I'm born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and I lived almost my entire life between Sofia and Newfoundland.And I'm an artist.
Luben:
I'm Luben Boykov, and I'm an artist too.
We immigrated to Canada when we were very young and we spent a lot of time, three decades in Newfoundland.
TP:
A love of art was something both Elena and Luben grew up with in the 1960s and seventies, in their hometown of Sophia, Bulgaria..
Elena:
My father, uh, was a sculptor. I grew up in an artistic family. All of my parents' guests were musicians, architects, uh, artists. So the most natural thing I guess, was to, to keep going with, uh, with, in the art field.
Luben:
My father was a sculptor too, and my upbringing was really the foundation for, for the choice that I made to become an artist.
Elena: You're a copycat (laughs)
Luben:
I'm a copycat. And by osmosis, we, we, we were saturated with those energies and values and dreams and aspirations.
TP:
Life for artists living in Bulgaria before the fall of Communism came with all sorts of challenges and pressures. And Luben and Elena’s fathers were no exception to that reality.
Luben:
They navigated a very treacherous and complex world because both our fathers were free spirited individuals and by definition incompatible within a totalitarian political context. So that they had to play a very complex role, uh, on the one hand surviving as artists, and on the other hand, expressing their true values as individuals, human beings, and also their artistic creeds. Sometimes that at the cost of, uh, political trouble or lost job opportunities, hard economic times, financial difficulties.
Elena:
The stories are endless. But one comes to mind. My father was arrested for example, in his thirties for looking at a, a art book of Van Gogh’s art. So that tells you the whole story.
Luben
Very different from the reality that we lived in in Canada coming to, to the free world and having all the freedom of expression to do whatever we wanted to.
Luben:
From the moment we, we met in 81, it was always on our mind to leave the country and move to the free world. We were not allowed to leave the country. Occasionally they will allow one person and keep somebody close to them as a hostage back in the country so that they had a guarantee, the person would come back.
Then in 89 Bulgaria and all the other Eastern block countries were forced by the west through economic sanctions and pressures, and also because prior to the collapse of the Berlin wall two months prior, they were forced so to speak, uh, by the Helsinki accord, which they had signed, which basically one of the stipulations of, of the accord was free possession of, of a passport.
TP:
Having access to passports for the first time in their lives, Elena and Lubin began to search for ways to defect from Bulgaria.
They shared their plans with their parents.
Elena:
They were devastated. Um, four of them, uh, I'm an only child and Lubin is an only child. Uh, Anna was the only grandchild. So you can imagine, uh, it was incredibly moving to say goodbye to them, not knowing when we will see them again.
TP:
Travelling directly to a Western country was still a no-go.
But they had heard rumours that some flights bound for Havana, Cuba routinely stopped for refuelling in Gander, Newfoundland.
So in the Winter of 1990…Luben and Elena packed their bags, and bundled up their two-year-old daughter Anna...
Elena:
And we were, we were telling Ana, she was old enough to understand that we are travelling. She was two years old and I said, Anna, we're going to the, to a beautiful place. We're going to a very nice place.
Luben
We boarded a plane en route to Havana via Moscow, hoping that it would touch down to refuel somewhere in North America or the United States or Canada.
There were about 30 or 40 Eastern European nationals, uh, among them, there were, there were some Polish, a couple of Czechs, Bulgarians. There were a few people from Sri Lanka.
TP:
Luben and Elena took their seats at the front of the plane. Elena held baby Anna in her arms.
Luben
And we noticed that almost all the passengers - Russian nationals were agents. So we knew that we could expect some, some resistance from them because, uh, at the time it was clear to everyone that all the Eastern Europeans were potential defectors.
TP:
They settled in for a long and nerve-wracking flight. And about seven hours into it…
Luben
The plane started descending. We had no idea where we were. Because no information was given, no PA announcements, nothing.
And when it got closer to the ground, we noticed that there was snow on the ground. So we knew we were not in Havana, but we had no idea where we were. And when it touched down and as it was taxiing on the runway, we noticed in the distance, the terminal building with the Canadian flag.
So we knew we were in Canada
TP:
To their surprise, the plane remained on the runway, and didn’t approach a terminal to allow passengers to get off while the plane refuelled.
Luben
And we knew that it was not legal to, to refuel the plane with the passengers on board. So we asked some of the attendants and of course they did not respond at all. And we had to basically take things into our own hands.
We just looked around. Elena she was sitting next to me with our baby at the time, there was another woman with a baby sitting just behind us.
And there were about 30 or 40 total, uh, passengers, whom we immediately recognized as potential defectors, but we were the first one in, in the first row with two more younger, uh, Bulgarians. And we just looked at each other basically, without uttering a word, we said, let's go.
So we just stood up and, uh, started moving towards the front of the plane where we were hoping to find an emergency exit or an exit.
And that's when some of the Soviet passengers, the Russian passengers stood in our way, and started screaming at us, that we're traitors of the, of the communist ideal, that we're defectors. And there's no chance in hell we're leaving this plane.
And that's when a brawl basically exploded because we were really committed to, to fight for our lives.And we managed to overtake them because there were lots of us.
Elena:
He was so determined to, to, to get out of the plane. And of course I was a bit more hesitant because I had a baby in my arms and couple of bags.
Luben
And the rest of the passengers behind us were also pushing and we basically trampled over them.
TP:
Luben and the other passengers in the front of the plane fought their way to an exit. They forced open the door, and released an emergency ladder.
Luben
And after another encounter with a couple of the pilots I ran out, out of the plane, uh, right on, on the tarmac.
And at that point I realised that Elena was nowhere to be seen.
Elena
Lubin disappeared. And basically I said I'm taking off to Cuba if I don't fight my way through. So I had to. And I was prevented by the hostesses and I literally had to kick and hit and they were pushing Anna and I was pushing them back. And, uh, trying to prevent her from being hurt I hurt myself on the rail. I was bruised.
And finally I tumbled down from this small staircase and Lubin was waiting for me.
So I just gave him Anna
Luben:
She threw the baby in my arms. And we ran on the tarmac as fast as we could. There were a couple of police, Canadian RCMP police cruisers parked.Soonce we were on the tarmac, we knew we were safe.
Elena:
I was choking. I had tears in my eyes. I couldn't breathe.
I was trying desperately to, to take a breath of air and I did, and it was minus 20. I could feel the cold air, but it was the freshest breath of air I ever took. I was just (she mimics taking a deep breath)
Elena
And when we entered the terminal…
Luben:
There was a small children's playground there with monkey bars. And Anna saw it and she said, is this the nice place? And we said, yes, that's the nice place. Go hang from the monkey bars.
Luben:
This was the beginning, the beginning of our adventure.
TP:
In the early part of the nineteen-nineties, more than 3000 Bulgarian refugees defected while they were en route through the Gander International Airport.
Most would go on to other parts of the country, but about 30 or so decided to stay in Newfoundland.
Luben and Elena hadn’t planned on staying, but a simple twist of fate set them on another uncharted course.
Luben
Maybe a month passed. And there were these organised bus trips by the federal government for people who wanted to move to different parts of Canada.
And we wanted to go to Montreal mostly because Elena spoke French and she was really struggling with English. And we had to come up with $200 for the three of us, for the family to cover the subsidised obviously cost of the trip.
But, uh, when the time came to, to pay for our tickets, we were $20 short, we had 180 and we couldn't board this bus.
And this is a small, tiny, insignificant circumstance that changed our lives.
Because in this interim, a few things happened. We met people, we established contacts. We saw opportunities for us in, in St. John's in Newfoundland, and we decided to stay.
Elean
I was, uh, ready to, to start a new life and to, to be happy again. We had a white canvas in front of us. And for an artist, this is a new beginning.
TP:
Getting your bearings in a new country takes time, no matter what your profession. And with a small child, and another to soon follow, Elena took time out from art to focus on her family.
Elena
I had to learn the language. I had a baby and we were struggling. So seven, eight years passed before I could go back and we had a second child in the meantime.
TP:
Luben Boykov is a classically trained sculptor, working mostly with bronze.
For that kind of work, you need a foundry, and at the time there wasn’t a suitable foundry available in the province for the kind of works he created. But things turned around when he met a professor from Memorial University.
Luben
I had this incredible opportunity to, to meet a man by the name of John Evans, with whom we immediately clicked. He was a biology professor at the university in St. John's at Memorial University, actually quite a well known internationally and well-established scholar.
And he came to me one day and said, would you like to come and work in a small barn that I have on my property? And we can set up a studio for you to do something. And maybe as a token of gratitude down the way you will give me one small sculpture.
And so we did, we renovated this barn and it became my first studio and I started working and slowly over time we accumulated a little bit of seed money to put into a larger studio and started building a sculpture Foundry.
And over the years it grew, it became one of the first environmentally-friendly foundry in Canada.
TP:
The physical landscape - the sky, the cliffs, the ocean, the wind - all began to influence Luben’s sculptures.
Luben:
The Newfoundland environment, natural environment, and the landscape really impacted my work. And it somehow permeated me and I started. Working with whatever was around me. I started working with leaves with branches, with grasses, different organic materials.
It just naturally spontaneously came, came to life.And ever since, since the mid nineties to this day, I'm really attracted to those materials, to working with simple, humble, natural materials that I find around me.
TP:
Elena returned to painting within a few years of settling in Newfoundland.
And the reception to the works she produced upon reentering the art world was so strong she launcheda solo show at The Rooms in St. John’s.She considers the paintings she did for this show as among of the best of her career.
Elena
So then 97 or eight I had my first solo show, and I exploded with so much to tell and, and spill out.
Lubin in fact told me your, your work is, it sounds like you've been like an artist who had been muted for a long time. And, and that's how it felt- I was muted for years and years, but then it was bang exploded. It felt great. I felt great.
I set myself free to do whatever I want to say, whatever I was moved by at the moment and I was crying over the human drama. I was inspired by a beautiful song. I was crying in a, in a good way over love and loss and the whole spectrum of of life.
And this is who I am as an artist. I love life. I do appreciate the beautiful moments, but the difficult are just as important.
I don't know where creativity comes from and how the relationship to line and shape and colour relates to an individual. It's, it's something that is born inside me.
TP:
Elena’s work, like Luben’s, has been incredibly influenced by her surroundings in Newfoundland. With more than 300 finished canvases over the course of her forty year career, I asked Elena if she had one or two that she felt were the best of her best.
Elena
One comes to mind. It was called Rock Water. It was a completely abstract piece that represented the land, the people and the water.
I wouldn't dare to interpret it. This is a very bad idea for an artist to interpret their own work. But it was a powerful, powerful piece of art, one of my best, because it represented exactly what I described, the rock, the water, people, the air and the wind of, of my life and my presence in Newfoundland.
I have another piece that I kind of treasure and it's, uh, it's here with us actually in Sicily, uh, it's called The End is love.
It is a somewhat dark piece,quite monotonous in terms of colour, because usually my, my, my work is very vibrant and have many, many colours. This, this particular piece is dark, but has a gold and woven into the fabric of the dark.
That is probably, uh, what, what I feel about this life and it's always dark, but there's always gold woven in. And I like the title. The end is love. What, what else can we say?
TP:
Both Elena and Luben’s work is heavily influenced with ideas of transformation, movement, transience.And one major work that Luben was commissioned to co-create is a testament to human movement.
Luben
The sculpture that I created in collaboration with a Swedish sculptor, Richard Brexel, was in celebration of the thousand years since the arrival of the Vikings in North America, but it was not focused solely on the event.
More, it was built around or inspired by the concept of the full circle whereby human populations up until that point had never fully circumnavigated the globe.
TP:
The massive sculpture is called The Meeting of Two Worlds, and it’s located at the UNESCO World Heritage site L’Anse Aux Meadows in Newfoundland.
Luben
And since we, as a species left Africa, those streams of people who populated the globe had never fully encircled it. So the Vikings, allegedly we're the first ones having crossed the Atlantic ocean and met with the indigenous populations of North America at the time on the Northern Peninsula, in Newfoundland.
They established this full circle connection between those streams of humanity.
So on a more philosophical level, perhaps this was the first act of globalisation and this was the, the, the foundation behind, behind the idea. And we wanted to somehow replicate - re-enact rather, this, this momentous event.
Each one of us creating one form representative of those two main streams of people. Richard Brexel, his form, they were rather abstract, shaped like a, like a sale of a Viking ship. But very organic. Mine was more streamlined, like an arrow that was invoking movement over land.
So movement over water, over land. And these two forms meet without really touching each other. There is a bit of an empty space between them and they form a bridge and they're so large that it's actually a bridge so that human beings can walk under those forms. And, uh, they create those two moments of, of human endeavour to reconnect with each other.
It sounds a little bit more poetic than perhaps it really was because there were skirmishes between the Vikings and Aboriginals. But irrespective of that it had to do with movement with the spirit of change and movement and exploration and finding new worlds in places.
Basically it is the, the uneasy spirit of, of motion. So on those grounds, I could strongly identify myselfwith those impulses that guided so many of our ancestors.
TP:
While the places Luben and Elena have called home have changed over the years, the one constant that is evident in speaking with them is their love and respect for each other, and their art.
Elena
There's so much talent in this world, but most of all, I have this, this artist next to me with whom I communicate and I chose to, to communicate, uh, not on the level of bed, the house, the plate, the church, the sky.
I chose someone with whom I can communicate daily on the work level. We can be each other’s admirers and, uh, that's, that's fabulous. That's absolutely priceless. I love the work Luben creates, and sometimes I get lost in it.
I admire his work so much that I feel so insignificant sometimes next to Luben’s work. And I said, oh my God, what am I doing? Look at Luben.
Luben:
And this goes for me as well. Next to Elena's, my work seems a secondary in importance and, and quality. So we admire the other's work absolutely naturally, it so happens, than our own.
Elena
I don't think we have an explanation why our relationship’s being so harmonious, uh, not only between us, but in the work field. I have no idea why it's been working so well. Of course we had our arguments and our differences of course, and our fights, but, uh, overall it's been an incredibly beautiful and light, full of lights, relationship.
TP:
After 30 years in Newfoundland, Luben and Elena now split their time between Toronto and Sisely. And their path to Sisely was as random as the flight path that brought them to Gander.
Elena:
I woke up one morning, uh, after a very vivid dream. And I told Lubin, I have to share with you the dream I had, uh, let's have a coffee and I'll tell him more about it.
And I said, I have a feeling that we should go and explore the island of Sicily. I have a feeling that we should probably spend more time in Sicily. And Luben looked at me and said, really? I said, why, what do you think? And he said, Hm, you lead the way and I'll follow you.
I didn't expect that answer. I expected “What? Sicily? Where the hell you want to go? Why?” And in fact, I received this answer.
And we found ourselves in Catania. Which is one of the big cities in Sicily and after two hours, uh, strolling down and up on the streets of Cantana, um, completely muted.
We didn't talk to each other. I said Luben what do you think? And he said, yeah, I think this is it.
Sicily is Newfoundland of the south.
Luben:
So many similarities. It is uncannyreally. It took us a while to discover this.
We didn't come for this reason, but over time, even to this day, hardly a day passes whereby we wouldn't make an observation - “Doesn't that remind you of Newfoundland? Doesn't this reaction, this, this, look, this gesture of people, their kindness, or their nonchalant attitude towards the vagaries of life.”
Islanders I guess, are similar the world over. We don't know that many, but when we were looking at the pictures that were taken years ago, and it was a picture of a family painting, uh, with, uh, their little boat punt turned upside down and the whole family - father mother and daughter were, were painting the boat. And I told Elena “Oh look - we must have taken this in Pooch Cove?” This was where we lived just outside St. John's.
And Elena said, no, look closely that’s Sicily, just around the corner here.
TP:
In describing this scene, the boat, the couple, the child, Elena considers for a moment what their parents would make of it all. Her mother still lives in Bulgaria, and Elena returns often to help care for her. The others are gone.
Elena:
Quite often I, I regret the fact that we can't spend more time in life with our parents and grandparents. And we would talk almost every, every other day, uh, how much we miss them. And we often imagine what my father would say, or what would Luben’s mothers say if they're here with us around the table or in Toronto or anywhere, anywhere else.
And we know that they would smile. They will be happy to, to see what we've achieved with our love. First of all, that we raised two beautiful human beings.
And even though we didn't achieve anything extraordinary, we just followed our path and our beliefs and we didn't budge.
To take risks as Borges says, and this is a quote when he was 90 almost. “If I was younger, I would take more chances. I would travel more around the world and I will see more sunsets.”
And I think we're doing that. We’re trying to take more chances and to see more sunsets. We haven't travelled a lot in the last couple of years, except between Toronto and Newfoundlandand and Bulgaria, where I go often to look after my mother.
But this will come too. We'll hopefully see more sunsets in the rest of our lives.
PP:
Artists Elena Popova and Luben Boykov spoke with producer Tina Pittaway from their home, outside Ispica, Sicily.
I’m Paolo Pietropaolo, and that’s all for season three of Countless Journeys, which comes to you from the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, located at the Halifax Seaport.
If you’d like to hear more stories like this and help new listeners discover this podcast, make sure to rate Countless Journeys on your favourite podcast app - or leave us a review.
Thanks for being with me for these wonderful and inspiring stories. Bye for now.