Page 22 - Cayle Chernin: My Russian Relatives

ISSUE : Issue 66

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1994/6/1

over the world, They rust come Young kids, really. They can t speaK che lan? guage, they come to a strange place. Where do they sleep? Where do they go? Eow do they eat? You know, it's extraordinary. And out of chat Grandpa built an extreme'.y successful business, L d. Chernin and Sons Wholesale in Glace Bay. They had many Red & White Stores all o/er the Maritimes Eventually when my father was in Stephen? ville, there was a pharmacy, there was a Red 6e White Store there and in Corner Brook and so on. And, you know, business for several families was set up. All the brothers, except for my father, went into L. H. Chernin and Sons, a family business. When my grandfather died, basically the information died with him. So noDody real? ly knew. My grandmother was not one for searching back. I can just see my grand? mother, if she had been alive today, if I had said, "Grandma, I discovered there's relatives in Russia." She would have said, "Never mind." Because they left, it was not something you went back to. When I came back here in '75, I wanted to go to Stephenville, to Newfoundland, because I was, again, intense about finding my roots ,and I was just Tots & Toddlers Daycare and PreSchool 42 GLENDA CRESCENT .SYDNEY. 18 months to 10 years Full Time & Part Time Open 7:30 • 5:30 Monday to Friday 539-6717 about to make this movie in Hollywood and I thought, How ex? citing, I'll go back to where I came from. This will give me such fuel for what I'm doing. And Grandma said, "There's no rea? son to go there. There's nobody there, there's nothing there. Its stupid. You 11 hurt yourself. You shouldn't go ??" lere '. r ' s 'ol i good idea. So ittuu, Ir'ou just :e aer you're n. -ng-- and you go. That's how you do it. u' .5n't apset her and aggravate her." So I sai , 'Grandma, I'm not going." "Good." And off I we.ii on the ferry to Port-aux-Basques and 'nto Stephenville. It was a wonderful expe? rience, actually, to go there. So she wasn't sentimental in that way. Once she made that journey that was it Bui Grandpa was. And so were chey in A'a''a. And when I was : hert:; :h': calked an " :alked very much aoout Grandpa's visit tu .-i.e in 1935. They all remembered it like craz/. In Moscow there was another cousin, Anya and her mother--and they remembered Grandpa coming and that he stayed at the Hotel Moscoff and when Svetlana asked for me, "How long did Grandpa stay in Moscow?"--she interpreted back to this Anya who saic. "The same as Cayle, two days" It '' je- comes history, you know. They were axx very appreciative of all that he had done or them. I mean, obviously he had sent a -Ot of things when he could. He had maintained the connection a lot. He went back in 35, which was not an especially good time to risk going to Russia--just before the war-- but he did and he tried to get them out, and he couldn't, I guess. And then he continued to write and be in contact. But then Boris was arres''te( by the secret police, and as far dc' .n '.and- father knew, he was killed. And cad was the information that my father naa That no, there's not another brother ..er bacic there, he was killed by the police in the late 'thirties. So when I wrote to them.... The way that I got the information was that a dentist in Brantford, Maurice Sussman, was looking for his family. They came from Borisov as well. One of them had changed their name to Chernin way back at the turn of the cen? tury. So he had that name, as well as Suss? man, the other name he was looking for. And he put an ad in a Yiddish paper in New York and a man answered the ad--a recently arrived immigrant named Alex Gorbach. And he had come from Russia and he said, "I'm related to Chernins of Glace Bay," because ]. Coadv Marsh ''-' '' Serving Those with a Hearing Problem Since 1961 • "There is no substitute for experience " arion HEARING AID CENTRE LTD. ' Hearing Aids • Free Hearing Tests • Repair Service • DVA Taps Cards Accepted • WCB Authorizations Accepted • N.S. Hearing & Speech Prescriptions Filled • Dianne MacLean, B.A., BC-HIS 'Irma Marsh, H.I.S. • Coady Marsh, B.Sc, B.1., P.Eng.. BC-HIS • Glenn Basso, B.BA, H.I S • Heather Grant, MSc, Audiologist TOLL FREE NUMBER 1-800-565-5881 173 ESPLANADE - SYDNEY • 539-5881 AND 125 MAIN ST - GLACE BAY • 849-8656 IF MO ANSWER CALL 539-5881

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