A lesson from history II

I was born beneath the long shadow of the Soviet Union, where truth was a hidden language spoken only in the safety of dimly lit kitchens. My childhood was shaped by the sound of swallowed words — sentences that drifted off before they reached the end, as if completion itself was dangerous. I remember the cold of winter mornings as I stood in long bread lines with my mother, snow settling on our shoulders like the dust of resignation. Adults leaned close, trading fragments of truth the way one might trade contraband — quietly, discreetly, with eyes that never rested too long on one place.

At school, we learned to repeat what was printed, not what was real. At home, reality was something delicate, unwrapped cautiously, and only when the curtains were drawn and the lights softened. Fear wasn’t loud — it never needed to be. It moved like a chill under the door, settling slowly into the bones of everyday life. We learned to live in a world where silence felt like safety and honesty was a luxury too costly to afford.

Coming to Canada felt like stepping into light after a lifetime underground. I breathed air that didn’t feel filtered. There was colour everywhere — in the marketplaces, in the conversations, in the laughter of strangers who debated politics without fear of losing jobs, friends, or freedom. I remember feeling almost weightless, as if the invisible burden I carried for years had finally slipped from my shoulders. This, I thought, is what it means to be unafraid. Freedom wasn’t something you defended — it was simply there, like sunlight, taken for granted by those who had never lived without it.

I held that sunlight close, like a flame cupped between my palms.

But over time, I began to notice a faint coolness in the air — subtle, but familiar. The kind of cold that precedes a season’s change. A chill I had hoped never to feel again.

Words are shifting. Not by decree, but by pressure. Certain thoughts are now handled with care, wrapped first in apologies or softened with disclaimers. People speak with the cautious tone I remember from my past — not because they are forbidden, but because they fear the consequences of honesty. Censorship does not march in with force; it floats in gently, wrapped in the language of safety and protection. It invites you to agree, to comply, to stay silent — for the “greater good.” Bureaucracy stretches its fingers into more corners of life, turning guidance into rules, suggestions into obligations.

Neighbours begin to watch one another, not out of compassion, but in quiet judgment dressed as virtue. And silence returns, not as law, but as habit.

This is how it began before.

Not with the slam of a door in the night — but with a subtle closing of the human spirit.

I do not claim Canada has become the land I fled. But to pretend I do not feel the echo would be a betrayal of memory. Those of us who escaped totalitarianism carry a kind of inner barometer — sensitive to shifts others cannot yet detect. We remember the early tremors, the quiet warnings, the uneasy stillness before voices disappeared.

This is why I speak.

Oppression does not arrive wearing its final form. It arrives disguised — in comfort, in caution, in requests so small they seem harmless to accept. It does not begin with prisons; it begins with self-silencing. With the inner decision to say nothing. With the belief that staying quiet is easier than being brave.

I came to Canada because it was free — proudly, defiantly, beautifully free. I will not let that freedom fade into a nostalgic story told to children as something that “once was.” I refuse to let silence become their inheritance. I will not allow fear to settle into their bones as it once settled into mine.

I speak because silence is the first frost that kills the garden.

Awareness — shared, spoken, refused to be dimmed — is the fire that keeps the cold at bay.

Canada still has warmth, still has light, still has a pulse of freedom.

But light survives only when enough hearts choose not to let it go dark.

NN