DZEROWICZ ROMA

Date and Place of Birth: Feb 17, 1958,  Toronto, ON Canada

Date of Interview: July 21, 2023

Place of Interview: Toronto, Ontario

Interviewer: Andriy Shwec

Length of Interview: 1 hour 30 min

(Excerpt):

RD: [Description of the experience of booking Holodomor Book trips to Maritime Canada] There is a demand and when we received funding this year it was for 8 months, and it was okay, fine.

I had gotten a phone call from somebody in Newfoundland, let me see what he says, he goes “I can get you 10 schools in Newfoundland to do”, okay no problem, but when you call back there was no communication with them for a while, so he says “okay, fine, we’re still going out East”.

I wrote to the schools in New Brunswick, wrote to certain school districts in Nova Scotia, and wrote to certain school districts in Newfoundland, and from that I created our trip out East. We were supposed to be going to New Brunswick and Covid hit, so my first reach out was to those schools. Just maybe two did in St. John, okay fine we’ll take care of the schools, some of them wanted us for a number of days, not a problem.

Then I realized that there was a community event happening in Nova Scotia, right across is where you catch the ferry. No problem, we’ll go there. We were very graciously welcomed by the Holy Ghost parish and to St. John, they had open arms, they had no issues of having us. I don’t want to say it’s the stress factor, but creating bookings outside of the GTA is a lot easier because of how more receptive those communities are.

CROSS REFERENCES:

Plast 

Holodomor Bus

Washington DC Holodomor Monument