My mother and her sisters attended a Ukrainian Baptist church every week, my father never went to this church and occasionally would go to the Russian Orthodox Church. Occasionally I went with my father because I liked travelling through the inner suburbs of Melbourne by tram on a Sunday morning. Melbourne was always deserted on a Sunday in the 1970s.  I remember in my teens I consciously was deciding whether to identify as “Ukrainian” or Russian. My mother had just returned from visiting her brother’s family in Montreal, Quebec. My mother asked me if I would be interested in accompanying her in the event of her returning there to live. I did give it some thought but was hesitant because my uncle was a Ukrainian nationalist and was incredibly rude and insulting to me some years previous when he visited us. I don’t think he respected the fact that my father was a Russian from Kursk.

Both of my mother’s sisters lived in Essendon. Essendon was the centre of the Ukrainian community in Melbourne. The Essendon football team's colours were red and black- blood and soil.