This past spring, while on an academic research trip to Vladivostok, I stumbled across a museum of naval history. I wasn’t expecting to learn anything about Canadian history during my visit to the Russian Far East. But then I met Yuri.
One of the guides at the museum, Yuri was a former Soviet and Russian naval officer and a warm, soft-spoken older man, having served in the armed forces for a quarter-century. He approached me to ask where I was from, and when I told him I was born in Canada, he immediately rushed to the museum archives.