Ivo Ceko was a member of a navy police unit guarding a lodge in a city in central Bosnia when he met a bunch of younger Canadians and Individuals in the summertime of 1994.
His English wasn’t excellent on the time, and so they could not communicate Croatian fluently – however they managed to trade just a few sentences.
“We discuss, we chuckle,” he recalled in a current cellphone interview. “I did not anticipate something from that (assembly).”
When a younger lady within the group informed Ceko that she was touring dwelling to Canada and requested if she might carry him again one thing, he jokingly replied, “Get me a passport.”
Learn extra:
Daughter reunites with delivery mom in Toronto 80 years after she was adopted
Learn subsequent:
Loblaw’s No Title value freeze ends as rival warns of looming price will increase
“‘Actually, do you wish to get out of right here?'” he remembered her asking. “I say, ‘who would not?’ It was a determined scenario.”
Three weeks later, the person in his thirties obtained a brown envelope. Inside have been clean Canadian immigration varieties and a pair of socks. He crammed out the paperwork, utilized for a visa and arrived in Canada in March 1997.
Now, almost three many years later, Ceko needs to reconnect with the group to inform them how grateful he and his household are for what they did.
“I simply wish to discover them and say thanks and, you realize, hug them and possibly have a drink with them,” mentioned Ceko from Calgary.
Ceko would not bear in mind a lot in regards to the 5 – 6 women and men who helped him, besides that they have been of their twenties and had a guitar.
He thinks they might have Croatian roots once they visited after Croatia declared its independence in 1991 – and through the brutal civil conflict that broke out throughout the former Yugoslavia within the years that adopted – to see how issues have been of their newly shaped ancestral land. go.
They might even have been staff of charitable organizations affiliated with church buildings that have been concerned in offering help to the determined inhabitants on the time.
He mentioned members of the United Nations peacekeeping power have been within the city and on the lodge, however he didn’t assume the group was a part of any navy.
The information that he had obtained the varieties traveled shortly by means of Novi Travnik, a small city the place everybody knew everybody. Earlier than lengthy, mates arrived and requested if they might make photocopies.
Ceko mentioned he would not know the way many individuals have really immigrated to Canada utilizing the photocopies, however he is positive just a few — together with one in all his mates — have.
Till now, Ceko had not had time to consider reconnecting with those that had helped him. For the previous 26 years he has raised two youngsters, despatched them to varsity and began a flooring enterprise.
He closed his enterprise when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. His youngsters are actually grown up and residing on their very own. As his sixtieth birthday approaches, he mentioned it was the precise time to start out the search.
“I at all times had (discovering them) in my thoughts, however I did not have the time. Now I’ve time,” he mentioned.
Final week, with the assistance of his daughter, he wrote a submit sharing his story on a Croatian-Canadian Fb web page.
To date he has uncovered no clues, however he hopes he’ll finally be “fortunate” sufficient to satisfy the group that modified his life.
“I will inform them the pleased story,” he mentioned. “They in all probability forgot about it, however I did not.”
© 2023 The Canadian Press
