Calgary man searching for group that helped him immigrate to Canada 3 decades ago
Ivo Ceko was a member of a military police unit that was guarding a hotel in a town in central Bosnia when he met a group of young Canadians and Americans in the summer of 1994.
His English wasn't very good back then, and they couldn't speak fluent Croatian – but they managed to exchange some sentences.
"We chat, we laugh," he recalled in a recent phone interview. "I didn’t expect anything from that (meeting)."
When a young woman in the group told Ceko that she was travelling home to Canada and asked if she could bring him anything back, he jokingly responded: "Get me a passport."
"'Really, you want to get out from here?'" he remembered her asking. "I say, 'who wouldn't?' It was a desperate situation."
Three weeks later, the man in his 30s received a brown envelope. Inside were blank Canadian immigration forms and a pair of socks. He filled out the paperwork, applied for a visa and arrived in Canada in March 1997.
Now, nearly three decades later, Ceko is looking to reconnect with the group to tell them how grateful he and his family are for what they did.
"I just want to find them and say thank you and, you know, hug them and maybe have a drink with them," Ceko said from Calgary.
Ceko doesn’t remember much about the five or six men and women who helped him, asides from that they were in their twenties and had a guitar.
He thinks they might have Croatian roots as they were visiting after Croatia announced its independence in 1991 – and during the brutal civil war that broke out within the former Yugoslavia in the years after – to see how things were going in their newly founded ancestral country.
They could have also been employees of charities affiliated with churches that were involved in delivering aid to the desperate population back then.
He said the members of the United Nations peacekeeping forces were in the town and at the hotel, but he doesn’t think the group was part of any military.
The news that he had received the forms travelled fast across Novi Travnik, a small town where everyone knew everyone. Soon, friends showed up, asking if they could make photocopies.
Ceko said he doesn't know how many people actually immigrated to Canada using the photocopies, but he is sure that a few – including one of his friends – did.
Until now, Ceko hasn't had time to think about reconnecting with those who helped him. He's spent the past 26 years raising two children, sending them off to university, and starting a flooring business.
He closed his business when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. His children are now grown and living on their own. As his 60th birthday closes in, he said it is the right time to start the search.
"I always have (finding them) on my mind, but I didn't have the time. Now I have time," he said.
Last week, with the help of his daughter, he wrote a post sharing his story on a Croatian-Canadian Facebook page.
So far, he hasn't uncovered any leads, but he hopes he will eventually get "lucky" enough to meet the group that changed his life.
"I am going to tell them the happy story," he said. "They probably forget about that, but I didn't."
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
MPP Sarah Jama asked to leave Ontario legislature for wearing keffiyeh
MPP Sarah Jama was asked to leave the Legislative Assembly of Ontario by House Speaker Ted Arnott on Thursday for wearing a keffiyeh, a garment which has been banned at Queen’s Park.
Mountain guide dies after falling into a crevasse in Banff National Park
A man who fell into a crevasse while leading a backcountry ski group deep in the Canadian Rockies has died.
2 teens charged in Halifax homicide: police
Two teenagers have been charged with second-degree murder in connection to an alleged homicide near the Halifax Shopping Centre earlier this week.
'Deep ignorance': Calls for Manitoba trustee to resign sparked after comments about Indigenous people and reconciliation
A rural Manitoba school trustee is facing calls to resign over comments he made about Indigenous people and residential schools earlier this week.
ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in U.S. if legal options fail, Reuters sources say
TikTok owner ByteDance would prefer to shut down its loss-making app rather than sell it if the Chinese company exhausts all legal options to fight legislation to ban the platform from app stores in the U.S., four sources said.
12-year-old hippo in Japan raised as a male discovered to be a female
When Gen-chan arrived at a zoo in Japan in 2017, no one questioned whether the then-five-year-old hippopotamus was a boy. Seven years later, zoo staff made a surprising discovery: Gen-chan, now 12, was female.
Here's why Harvey Weinstein's New York rape conviction was tossed and what happens next
Here's what you need to know about why movie mogul Harvey Weinstein's rape conviction was thrown out and what happens next.
Improve balance and build core strength with this exercise
When it comes to cardiovascular fitness, you may tend to focus on activities that move you forward, such as walking, running and cycling.
Legendary hockey broadcaster Bob Cole dies at 90: CBC
Bob Cole, a welcome voice for Canadian hockey fans for a half-century, has died at the age of 90. Cole died Wednesday night in St. John's, N.L., surrounded by his family, his daughter, Megan Cole, told the CBC.