NOW AS THEN
A WEEK INTO Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, I called up my friend John-Paul Ricchio. I had seen his Instagram posts of outrage and despair, with information about protests, and links to donate. He was also sharing memories of a 1991 trip his mother, Marianne Ricchio (née Eurke), and grandmother, Mary Stephanie Eurke (née Wozney) and grandfather, Michael Eurke, had taken. It was their first visit to Ukraine. One photograph shows the group in front of the family’s ancestral home in the village of Horodnytsia in the Ternopil region of Western Ukraine. His grandmother is meeting her father’s sister, Stephanie — holding the traditional greeting of bread and salt — who is the last living link to J.P.’s great-grandfather, Dmytro Wozney, who made his way to Canada in 1913 as the First…
