Ottawa, December 1990: Not long before, I had come to Canada from Maryland after completing a contract at Washington College, my second “stop” in the USA after I left Slovenia in summer 1989. My closest Yugoslav diplomatic mission was in the US capital city: In autumn 1990, I went there to renew my “red” passport, without which I could go nowhere. The Slovenian security officer at the embassy told me in confidence that Yugoslavia was falling apart and that he could not say anything else as walls have ears. 

In Ottawa, my friends invited me to “go to see the Christmas lights” with them – for me this meant to take a walk from one street to another, but in fact, we were driving by car from one part of the city to another one. In the end we went to the hill above the Ottawa river where Queen Victoria had the Canadian Parliament built, located high on the rock with a view to the other side of the Ottawa river, to the Province of Quebec. All this time we were listening to a Canadian radio station, when in the middle of the seasonally decorated neo-medieval buildings, we all became silent as it was announced in the news that Slovenia, in the referendum, had voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence. Dark night and Christmas lights and inner light: historic moment, tears, deep emotion, pride and joy and of course, concern at what Slovenia’s decision might bring about. 

I came back home only in summer 1992 when my visa situation stabilized and I could travel more easily, although still with the “red” passport of the country that no longer existed. In the meantime, it was June 1991, with events that were followed from the other side of the ocean, and among the Canadian Slovenians increasing satisfaction and the hope that the whole reason why they had emigrated might be turned on its head.