Year-end Newsletter 2016

From Koozma J Tarasoff and Kristina Kristova

Dear Friends,

Pearls Before Swine, by Stephan Pastis, GoComics, Dec. 25, 2016.

The year 2016 has passed by quickly. Both Kristina and I are well and keep busy on our respective activities.

This summer Kristina spent a month in her homeland Bulgaria visiting friends and relatives whom she misses a lot. Her brother Dmitar, long retired, continues to live in Burgas, while son Orlin resides in Bozensi and Sofia while working as composer musician. Kristina’s daughter Milena lives and works as a music teacher in Ottawa.

With the International Languages Program (IL Elementary Program), Ottawa Catholic School Board Continuing and Community Education Department, Kristina continues her Saturday morning work as Site Administrator looking after 240 students. In July she did the same with a full month of work in the Summer School.

On June 3rd, Koozma’s brother John died at the age of 88 in Saskatoon and Koozma joined John’s children in the city celebrating John’s life as ‘a Canadian pioneering hero’. We all miss him dearly ‘a memorable brother, a friend, a father to Lorne, Kerry and Wendy — an example of a hard working man to all of us, our children and our grandchildren’.

As in many previous years, Koozma was busy as a peace activist, peace journalist, and photographer. He appeared as Peace Elder with Bill Bhaneja on Rogers TV in May. He supported the protest against CANSEC with its annual international arms trade show in Ottawa in the same month. His biggest challenge was the Ottawa Peace Festival 2016 where his illustrated Tarasoff Briefs highlighted the 11-day event celebrating peace and environment activities in Canada’s capital city.

Koozma has continued to host the Spirit-Wrestlers Website and Blog with webmaster Andrei Conovaloff in Arizona, focusing on Doukhobors and relevant issues. We often simultaneously co-edit my drafts using Google Hangouts (similar to Skype), and share news and ideas. Our ongoing projects involve false material about Doukhobors in print and on the Internet.

Koozma is behind schedule on his first eBook: Spirit Wrestlers: Doukhobor Pioneers and Their Friends, with 35 contributors. Sorry, I get interrupted, often carried away, with important current peace stories.

Koozma’s son Lev continues to teach physics at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland, commuting from Guelph, Ontario. Dr. Tarasov manages glacial research with local and international collaborators. His wife Dorothee Bienzle manages a laboratory studying retroviruses, at the University of Guelph. Son Jaspar studies at Queen's University in Kingston in a dual BSc in Kinesiology and physics; he will have an overseas semester in Auckland, New Zealand this spring (fall in New Zealand); and he was the 2016 Frosh Week coordinator for his college. Daughter Katya will finish high school and will spend February to May travelling around the world before returning for soccer season.

Koozma’s daughter Tamara continues to work for Parks Canada. Her recent trip to the Western Arctic was a highlight for the year. Her husband John continues to work for Heritage Canada. Their son Nicholas began his first year of studies in Mechanical Engineering at McGill University in Montreal, while daughter Elena goes to Filamen Wright School in Gatineau, Quebec. Both children are top students in school and are active in sports.

Keeping healthy and fit has been a preoccupation for all of us. Koozma’s children and families have been active in outdoor sports such as canoeing, hiking, and skiing. Koozma does his morning and evening exercises and takes outdoor walks on a regular basis. To keep their balance and remain in shape, Koozma and Kristina have joined an aerobic dance class for seniors.

As the year comes to a close, we wish our dear friends around the world the best of good health, creativity, joy, love and happiness in 2017.

Koozma J. Tarasoff and Kristina Kristova, 882 Walkley Road, Ottawa, Ontario K1V 6R5, Canada. Emails: kjtarasoff@gmail.com, k.kristova1@gmail.com.
Website: www.spirit-wrestlers.com.

---

Previous year-end reports 
     2015 — 2014 — 2013 — 2012 — 2011 — 2010 — 2009

Year-end Newsletter 2015

Dear Friends,

Seeking good health, visits with family and friends, travel, photography, and working to create a culture of peace has occupied our time in the past year.

The last week of 2015 was a very memorable warm and wonderful vacation in Cuba with family and friends (909 photos). The island is a social experiment promoting an equitable society. Did you know that Cuban police do not carry guns? Why? Because drugs are absent. People feel very safe.

Koozma’s trip to Saskatchewan in summer was an opportunity to show two of his grandchildren (Nicholas and Elena) the places where the Tarasoff ancestors lived, worked and went to school. It was also a time to introduce the children to cousins, uncles and aunts and see my brother John in Saskatoon.

Being an activist, writer and photographer for the annual Ottawa Peace Festival was again a challenge. ‘Peacing together the Canada we want’ was part of a larger frame in which we create an image of the future where we can live in a peaceful world with a friendly attitude to the environment. Our important work continues to ensure that our planet and its peoples will survive.

Reviewing books and plays, answering questions, working on an eBook of Biographies, and with webmaster Andrei Conovaloff (Arizona, USA) has kept Koozma busy. Our mission continues to be to search for truth and a nonkilling future.

With Kristina and her daughter Milena, Koozma visited New York City in the spring. We did a lot of walking — visited the Guggenheim Museum, went to the top of Empire State Building, and visited the World Trade Center site of 9/11. On 57th Street, we took pictures of the famous Carnegie Hall where Kristina in the fall of 1963 danced with the Koutev Bulgarian National Ensemble (State Ensemble for Folk Song and Dance) and toured 25 USA states and Canada.

In this 1963 Program at University of Michigan she performed as a soloist in many dances.

Kristina continues to work part-time on Saturday mornings as Site Administrator with the International Languages Program of the Ottawa Catholic School Board (OCSB) Continuing and Community Education Department, serving over 230 students.

Kristina’s daughter Milena teaches music in Ottawa, while Orlin, Kristina’s son in Sofia, Bulgaria, is working as a musician / composer.

Lev continues to teach physics at Memorial University of Newfoundland, in St. John’s. He commutes to Guelph, Ontario as needed; his wife Dorothee Bienzle teaches at the University of Guelph. Their son Jaspar is now studying at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, while daughter Katya continues to be a good student and a soccer athlete.

Koozma’s daughter Tamara continues to work for Parks Canada, while her husband John travels widely and works for Heritage Canada. Their son Nicholas is studying at Cégep Heritage College in Gatineau, while daughter Elena goes to Philemon Wright School. All are good students and active in sports.

Kristina and Koozma have maintained close contact with family and friends including several Bulgarian families in Ottawa. We were delighted to be guests of the beautiful weddings of the children of friends — Arinka, the daughter of Kalinka and Aram Naltchadjian, and Luba — the daughter of Tatiana and Mike Raytchev. These two events radiate beauty of Love and Happiness to all of us! Direct visits, emails, telephone and Skype connections give us an opportunity to maintain ties across the country and abroad.

Together we wish all our dear friends the best of good health, creativity, love, joy and happiness in 2016.

Koozma J. Tarasoff and Kristina Kristova, 882 Walkley Road, Ottawa, Ontario K1V 6R5, Canada. Emails: kjtarasoff@gmail.com and k.kristova1@gmail.com

---

Previous Year-end Newsletters : 2014 — 2013 — 2012 — 2011 — 2010 — 2009

Year-end Newsletter 2013

From Kristina Kristova and Koozma J. Tarasoff

Dear Friends,

2013 was for us an interesting and busy year of organizing events, doing photography, much writing, travelling, and unforgettable celebrations and meetings with friends.

In mid-March, with great enthusiasm, Koozma enrolled in a documentary film-making course under the masterwork of Peter Biesterfeld. Following the workshops, the Doc Team of Ken, Diane, Patricia and Koozma created their projects. Koozma's project featured the life of Kristina and the Bulgarian cuisine -- making delicious Banitsa.

In June the Canadian War Museum invited Koozma to be part of its 2nd Human Library Project of 25 'Books'. The 25 participants, with significant life experiences, were invited to be 'books' which the 'readers' can order for 20-minute interviews. The conversation revealed the wisdom and the interesting personal stories of each book-author. As a long term peace activist, Koozma talked about the challenges of creating a peace culture in our society. He was also part of a short promotional video clip at the Peace Exhibition. This novel public educational format was first used in Denmark in 2000 to focus attention on anti-violence, to encourage dialogue and build relations. It has grown in popularity with over 30 countries participating. The Museum exhibition on peace opened in May and continued on for the rest of the year.

Throughout the year, Koozma has been busy as volunteer photographer and writer in the peace movement in Ottawa. His major effort has been the 7th Annual 12-day Ottawa Peace Festival in September, which his colleague Bill Bhaneja has described as 'the longest peace festival in the world'. With hundreds of images and interesting summaries of the events, he gave participants and readers of his website colorful pictures and interpretations of the growing peace festival in Ottawa.

'The Evolution of the Doukhobor Movement' was the title of Koozma's lecture presented with great success at the University of Ottawa in November. The 'thank you' letters received as a response showed that students and professors were impressed and intrigued by his illustrated lecture with slides and film.

Sincere appreciation to Andrei Conovaloff, Koozma's friend and webmaster in Arizona. Their creative collaboration is not only a pleasure, but has great results. Koozma and Andrei continue to discover new insights into developing humanity. With Andrei's help, Koozma's Spirit-Wrestlers Website and Blog has had another successful year as an independent media source. Its themes have included the Doukhobors, the peace movement, the nonkilling paradigm, the health care system, First Nations, video production, Hippies, the myth of Biblical Christianity, and more.

Kristina has had another successful year as Site Administrator of the Saturday morning International Languages Program. In July and August she worked with the big Summer School International Languages Program in Ottawa.

On February 16th, family and friends celebrated Kristina's 70th Birthday at the Bulgarian Embassy. It was an emotional evening celebrating her life and contribution as a TV anchor person for 28 years with the Bulgarian National Television and her contribution of 22 years as a volunteer for the Bulgarian community in Ottawa. More than 80 people participated in the memorable evening with speeches, pictures, songs and tasty Bulgarian food. Kristina's daughter Milena was Master of Ceremonies. DJ was Martin Staykov. Koozma selected and digitized 200 images for an interesting Power Point presentation. On this occasion the Bulgarian Government and the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad awarded Kristina with a life-time Paisii Hilendarski Memorable Medal and Certificate of Honour for her long term activity in preserving and popularizing the Bulgarian culture in Canada. Our friend Anton Peltesky created a beautiful video documentary about the event. Sincere appreciation to all our friends who contributed their positive energy and well wishes to the success of this celebration.

As part of her 22 years of voluntary work for her compatriots, Kristina has successfully completed her second term (2011-2013) as President of the Bulgarian Community and Bulgarian Foundation in Ottawa. At the Annual General Meeting on December 2nd she officially resigned. Her Annual Report recalled many social and cultural events during this time such as the visit in Ottawa of the Bulgarian Minister of Culture with delegation, official guests from the Agency for Bulgarians Abroad, many Bulgarian pop stars, actors, childrens' choir, movie evenings, etc.

The Bulgarian community recognized Koozma as an 'Honourary Member' not only for documenting with pictures every event, but also for his participation in organizing activities.

Kristina's daughter Milena continues to teach music in Ottawa as well as working as office manager for a medical doctor. Orlin, Kristina's son in Sofia, Bulgaria, continues his work as musician/composer.

In the early morning of December 22nd, Kristina and Milena left for a vacation to Halguin, Cuba. They gladly missed one week of severe weather in Ottawa. On the way home from Cuba in five hours, they experienced a change of temperature from plus 28 degrees to minus 30. Their stay in Cuba was a breath of fresh sunny air with much deserved relaxation.

Koozma's son Lev (Associate Professor in the Dept. of Physics and Physical Oceanography, Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland), his wife Dorothee (a full Professor at the University of Quelph) and daughter Katya from Guelph, Ontario, are on a six-month sabbatical in Auckland, New Zealand. After completing his Grade 12, son Jaspar joined them for Christmas. New Zealand has been an oasis for them. Katya has been to France and the USA as part of her soccer career, and her training schedule has kept her and her family busy.

Koozma's daughter Tamara and husband John have continued to work for Parks Canada. In summer, they and their children Nicholas and Elena took a three-week historic excursion to Western Canada including a trip to the Yukon and a five-day Chilkoot Gold Rush Trail hike. They visited Japanese, Doukhobor and Canadian historic sites including visits with relatives and friends. This was a grand way to learn Canadian history and connect with our past.

Kristina and Koozma spent several days at the resort Calabogie Peaks. As well, we visited friends Boris and Annie Michov in their beautiful house near Kingston, Ontario. We had a day-long excursion to the Jones Falls Locks on the Rideau River where we watched large and small boats go through the four locks. It is amazing that this 1830s technology is still useful and works properly after so many years. It is a unique engineering achievement.

Several times, Koozma travelled to Perth, Ontario to visit his friends Jim and Ruth Deacove of Family Pastimes Cooperative Games. For the 7th year, Jim has led monthly film screenings in town showing wonderful short and long films.

On several occasions we had the pleasure of having dinner and meeting with Alex Atamanenko, Member of Parliament for BC Southern Interior, and his wife Ann. Alex has been instrumental in tabling a Private Member's Bill for creating a Canadian Dept. of Peace.

For over one year, Mohsen Akhavannia of Iran has lived in our house during his study at Carleton University. We enjoyed his kind manner, intelligence, nice sense of humour, computer knowledge and cooking talent.

Konstantin Romanov, Professor of Canadian Studies from Moscow University, who was completing his Post Doc Studies at Carleton University, was another pleasurable and creative contact for Koozma and Kristina during his stay in Ottawa. It resulted in several interviews, a few videos of lectures, sharing contacts with friends, visits, etc.

Direct visits, emails, telephone and Skype communications have given us an opportunity to maintain contact with family and friends across the country and the world. We are grateful to be healthy and to renew our friendships as well as meet new ones. It was another great year!

We join together and wish all of you our dear friends, the best of health, love, creativity, joy and happiness in 2014!

Year-end Newsletter 2012

From Koozma J. Tarasoff and Kristina Kristova

Dear Friends,

Like last year at this time, Ottawa had only a trace of snow and seasonal temperature. With warmth again we are glad to greet you with the best of the holiday season and wish you and your family good health, happiness, joy, and peace throughout the New Year 2013.

Kristina has again been busy Saturday mornings working as a Site Administrator of the International Languages Program in one of Ottawa’s schools. She supervises 14 teachers and classes in Traditional Mandarin, Dutch and Tigrinya. In July she was very busy as Site Administrator of the 5-week Chinese Summer School.

As volunteer, Kristina has continued to be active with the cultural health of the greater Ottawa Bulgarian Community, in the capacity of President of the Bulgarian Association and the Bulgarian Foundation. In October and November, she spent seven weeks in Sofia, Bulgaria, visiting her son Orlin and helping him renovate his apartment. She met many of her friends from her 27 years as a professional TV anchor person for the National TV as she enjoyed cultural life in the European city. Her daughter Milena (a flute and piano teacher in Ottawa, and Manager of a doctor’s office) had earlier spent two months in Europe visiting friends and exploring new places.

With Kristina away, Koozma renovated his study and that of Kristina’s with a subtle suggestion to his partner and friend to get on with her biography. Otherwise, as he did throughout the year, Koozma was active writing on his website Spirit-Wrestlers.com and blog. Some of the themes that brought interest across the miles were the Canadian Department of Peace Initiative, the 6th Ottawa Peace Festival, the nonkilling paradigm, media and democracy, the Cold War, book reviews, and internal debates amongst those in his Doukhobor-Tolstoyan heritage.

With his webmaster Andrei Conovaloff in Arizona USA, Koozma has continued to explore hidden parallels between Doukhobors and Pryguny, especially how minority zealots in each branch have hijacked the identity of the majority. When Koozma’s co-publisher Legas had no room for his major book (Spirit-Wrestlers: Doukhobor Pioneers’ Strategies of Living, 2002) Andrei purchased most of the remaining inventory as gifts for supporters of his project: Spiritual Christians Around the World.

In February the Bulgarian community in Ottawa along with friends celebrated Koozma’s 80th birthday with messages from home and abroad. A new Sony digital camera was one of the gifts which he now proudly uses in documenting stories of peace, ethnicity, and human interest around him. For his volunteer work, Koozma — the photographer, writer, and bridge-builder — was honoured in September by Ian Prattis’s organization with a Friends of Peace Award at Ottawa’s City Hall.

Koozma’s son Lev is a glaciologist and professor at Memorial University in St. John’s Newfoundland. Earlier this year he was honoured for his work by being provided with a budget for five more years as head of a Science Chair in Glacial Dynamics Modelling. In July he astonished all of us with his 650 km. gruelling trip along the north Atlantic coast, in a kayak, with a team of two other men. (Seakayaking Adventure in Northern Labrador)

Dorothee Bienzle (Lev’s wife) continues to be busy as professor and researcher at Guelph, University. Their children, Jaspar (aged 17) and Katya (aged 13) are good students active in sports. Katya has just earned a place on the U14 provincial team in Soccer.

Koozma’s daughter Tamara, her husband John, and children Nicholas (aged 15) and Elena (aged 11) are all well and active in sports and in their community. Besides being good students in school in a bilingual program (English and French), Nicholas is especially active in hockey. In his work, John this year has made trips to St. Petersburg, Russia, Korea and India. Tamara has shown how democracy works by actively helping to organize the local Wakefield, Quebec community to overturn a political decision that would pollute the pristine Gatineau River. It took three years, many meetings and 134 blog postings to make this happen. (Tamara Tarasoff Awarded for Volunteerism)

Kristina and I had several occasions during the year to host visitors from Canada and abroad. One of these was a delightful visit in June by Nona Kucher and Tammy Verigin-Burk of the interior of British Columbia. They are daughter’s of friends Elmer and Marilyn Verigin of Castlegar. In September, Konstantin Romanov, the young Russian professor from Moscow, stayed with us for three weeks as he got ready to begin his one year post-doc work in Canadian Studies at Carleton University.

The email, telephone and Skype continue to be the common mode of communications with friends and relatives across the country and abroad. However, we are always aware that there is no substitute for face-to-face contact. We therefore strive to meet with relatives and friends directly whenever we can.

As the old year ends and the New Year begins, we join together to wish all of you our friends the best of health, creativity, joy and good works in 2013.