bout de papier, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2011) — Winter/Spring 2011 // Hiver/Printemps 2011, pp. 20–22
My route to Canada was more indirect than others but my experience in leaving Czechoslovakia would parallel that of many who faced the trauma of those days. I suspect my love for the Canada I came to know probably would resonate with even more.
On the evening of August 20th, 1968, I was having dinner with one of my friends and my father. My father was the head of the Military Medical School and Chief of Staff of the Hospital for Internal Medicine in Hradec Kralove, my home town some 80 km southeast of Prague. He was a highly visible figure in the 1967-68 liberalization movement and a key voice representing the Czechoslovak scientific community. I was a second year law student at the Charles University in Prague.
That night, there was an intense discussion about the possibility of Russian invasion in the coming days and weeks. I remember the arguments and counter-arguments in what was a heated, emotional discussion. My friend was convinced the invasion was imminent. My father and I argued that “1968 was not 1956” and that “the Russians could not afford the wrath of international public opinion and worldwide condemnation” in the event of an invasion.
At midnight, with neither side conceding the argument, my friend left and the two male Jurkovics went to sleep. The female Jurkovics were out of the country. My mother, an interpreter with the Czechoslovak Tourist Agency, was in Hungary with a tour group. My sister, a fourth year medical student, was in East Germany, working in a Dresden hospital.
At 1:15 a.m., the phone rang, the call coming from the town’s military command centre, announcing the invasion and requesting my father, the second highest ranking military officer in Hradec, to immediately report to the headquarters. Fifteen minutes later, after we had recovered from the initial shock, I saw my father leave in his colonel’s uniform, with a side-arm strapped to his belt. In 19 years, it was only the second time I had seen my father in a uniform and the first time with a gun. Emotions ran very high and we agreed I would join him in the hospital later that morning. The rest of the night was spent listening to radio and TV, and the many voices of friends calling in utter despair – all of us trying to anticipate what would happen next.
The tanks arrived in Hradec at 10:30 a.m. on August 21st. By this time, the TV stations were shut down and only the main national radio station was broadcasting from Prague studios. Part of the broadcasts contained warning of imminent arrests by the KGB of the original signatories of a key Spring 68 article – “2,000 Words” – published and signed by 20 leading Czechoslovak personalities and intellectuals. It called for active participation of the citizens in the liberalization movement. My father was one of the 20 who signed, together with Olympian Emil Zatopek, novelist Milan Kundera and other Czechoslovaks who were a respected part of the country’s psyche.
By noon on the 21st, throughout the town and the country, there was palpable chaos, fear and uncertainty. Phones went dead, media broadcast became more sporadic but there was more…open defiance, desire to resist, to show our anger. Street signs started coming down, phone lines went dead, cartoons and signs appeared in storefronts and windows, mocking the invaders. Thousands in the streets were wearing national tri-colour ribbons, people clustered around the tanks and army trucks, yelling, crying, trying to reason or just quietly staring at the Russian soldiers.
By the time I went to see my father, he had been spirited away and was in hiding. My father came home five days later after it became clear that signatories of the “2,000 Words” article who were arrested in the first two days had been released. In the intervening days, both my mother and sister also arrived and the family made a decision to leave. Not necessarily to immigrate, though this was a possibility, but simply to leave the uncertain, short-term future behind us.
On the morning of the 31st, we piled into our car, with small suitcases, and headed for the Austrian border. It was uncertain that we would be able to cross. As it turned out, and in spite of the many Russian tanks at the border, we were simply waved through by the Czech guards and were soon en route to Vienna. The Austrian border officials were equally magnanimous and, having barely glanced at our passports, waved us on.
In Vienna, we settled in a cheap hotel, found the British Embassy and on September Ist, lined up in a long line of our compatriots to get visas for England — where we had relatives and where we had all holidayed before. On September 4th we arrived in London and moved into an apartment arranged by my father’s cousin, not far from Marble Arch.
In the intervening weeks, my sister resumed her medical studies, and I went to study social sciences, both of us at the University of London. My father became a student too, having to pass British Royal Medical Society exams. By November he was once again a Professor of Cardiology, now at the Hammersmith Hospital and University of London Medical School. He was 53 at the time.
I admit that I did not handle the early months of immigration well —I was a fish out of water, missing my friends, the language, the culture, and home. I was afraid that I would snap and go back. This became the primary motivation for my visit to the Canadian High Commission, where ! requested immigration to Canada.
Why Canada? Several reasons. First, as an avid reader and student of history, I was always fascinated with the exploration of the North; my father, a passionate Francophile, and I also had many discussions about the exciting young Québécois intellectuals now in power in Canada — Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Robert Bourassa. I applied in mid-November, was quickly processed as a political refugee, and on January 13, I flew to Edmonton.
It was minus 44 when I arrived, without a winter coat. In less than 24 hours, the astonishingly kind and helpful local immigration officials had provided me with a parka, a warm hat and gloves, long underwear and boots, as well as a job and accommodation. My first job, for four months, at $1.55/hour, was sorting bottles in a 7-Up bottling company, staring at 7:00 a.m. each morning, walking some 2.5 km to work.
Eventually, I made my way to Waterloo which became my first home and where I fell in love with Canada. My first degree was from Waterloo Lutheran University, in History and Political Science. Among my professors was Max Saltzman, a member of Parliament and NDP Finance Critic. Fuelled by his and my love of 19th century European literature, we quickly became friends. This led to a part-time job as his research assistant, spending one week a month in Ottawa. I did my Masters at the University of Waterloo in Canadian Studies and, in part because of Max, I went to Carleton University to do my PhD in International Relations.
In 1975, a year into the program, I was hired by External Affairs where I spent four and half years in the Public Affairs Bureau before going on a posting to Bonn in 1980 as the cultural attaché. Strangely enough, by this time, both my parents and my sister had been in Germany for many years and for the next four, the Jurkovics lived in the same country again.
In 1984, upon return from Bonn, I was asked by Derek Burney, then ADM of the U.S. Branch, to become the Deputy Director of Public Affairs for the Branch (in the old URR). Soon after, Brian Mulroney became the Prime Minister and the focus of much foreign policy turned south of the border and everyone in the U.S. Branch embarked on an exciting whirlwind of activities, including the negotiation of the Free Trade Agreement and the Clean Air Agreement.
By the fall of 1988, after much soul-searching, I made my decision to leave DFAIT and in 1989 I hung-up my first shingle as a public affairs and communications consultant, under the name of Paradigm Communications. The company quickly grew into full service consultancy, focusing on work with the federal government, including many projects with DFAIT, CIDA and other departments involved in international affairs.
Over the years my team developed a good number of training sessions in communications and marketing. By 1998, this became a major preoccupation. A year later, with two partners, I co-founded the Centre for Excellence in Communications (CEC), focusing on public sector training. The CEC now regularly delivers close to 70 different sessions across every area of communications, marketing and media relations, taught by 30 different instructors. In the last five years the CEC has trained 6,500 public servants from over 150 organizations in federal, provincial and municipal governments across Canada. Four such sessions recently were delivered at DFAIT with a focus on “Risk, Issues and Crisis Communications”…so to paraphrase an old adage, “you can take a boy out of DFAIT but you cannot take DFAIT out of the boy”.
I sometimes wonder what would have become of me if the Soviets had not invaded or if I had not been able to make that leap to Edmonton back then. What I know for certain is that the speed with which my application as a political refugee was processed and the welcome I got on arrival in Canada set the scene for what has been a very rewarding life — with more to come!
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2011) — Winter/Spring 2011 // Hiver/Printemps 2011, pp. 20–22. Read the rest of this issue →
