From Van to Toronto: A Life in Two Worlds

About the Book

This memoir describes a long and unusual life that started in eastern Turkey in 1896 in a house with an earthen floor, and ended in middle-class comfort in suburban Toronto nearly a century later. The author was an eyewitness to the first genocide of the 20th century, a horror in which most of his family was lost. He lived through the first World War and the Bolshevik Revolution that led to the creation of the Soviet Union. He fled from Soviet Armenia, first to Moscow and then to London. From there he went with wife and baby daughter to Toronto, where he faced the task of earning a living during the Great Depression. Caught up in this swirl of historical forces he describes in fascinating detail his remarkable story of survival. And, perhaps not the least remarkable fact of this life, he was over 80 years of age when he began writing his life story. There is much here to stimulate and educate, not only those who wish to know more about the Armenian Diaspora, but everyone with an interest in the human condition as it was experienced in other places and in another time.

About the Author

Oksen Teghtsoonian was born in 1896 in Van in eastern Turkey. By 1916 his parents, three brothers and a sister died as a result of the genocide of Armenians and the warfare between Turks and Russians. He immigrated to Canada in 1922 lived in Toronto until his death in 1987.