Re: Angles 'n' Attitudes by William Bothwell

I read Mr. Bothwell's interesting article regarding Grand Duchess Olga. I am quite certain that Mr. Bothwell is mistaken when he says he received an invitation from Principal Cedric Sowby to attend Upper Canada College when Queen Elizabeth visited.

She has never been to the College nor has she ever been expected to be at the College. However, her husband, Prince Phillip, has visited on several occasions.

Bert Sommerfeld

via e-mail

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Thanks so much for your reminiscence of the Grand Duchess Olga Aleksandrovna. I so enjoyed reading your article.

I am of Russian ancestry. My grandparents fled Russia in 1920. Both of my grandfathers were in the White Army. My great-grandfather was killed by the bolsheviks in 1919. He was taken from his sickbed and summarily shot. His body was thrown into a ditch. His only "crime" was that he was a retired general in the Russian Imperial Army and a landowner. When he was arrested, his local peasants demanded his release from prison. They were threatened with arrest themselves. He was 67 yrs. old when he was murdered by the bolsheviks.

I visited Russia for the first time with my father in 2000. We traveled all the way across Russia-from Vladivostok to Moscow- via the Trans- Siberian RR. We later went to visit our ancestral estate (near Gdov, not far the the Estonian border today) and surprisingly were met by the locals who remembered our family kindly. Our ancestral church is still standing and is used by the local villagers. Both my father and I were greeted with bread and salt and I was given a bouquet of flowers. The church dates from the late 18th century. One of our goals was to locate the remains of my murdered great-grandfather.

One of our stops along the way to Moscow was in Yekaterinburg. We went to see the site of the infamous Ipatiev House (it was an empty field in 2000 with a small wooden chapel).

Today a large church is built on the site dedicated to the Imperial Martyrs. The Russian Church canonized the entire Imperial Family in 2000.

Your article triggered this memory-thanks.
Peter Konovnitzine
via e-mail

Thanks to Herbert Sommerfeld for correcting a faulty memory. It was, indeed, Prince Philip's visit to UCC, Toronto, that I missed.

On that occasion Prince Philip was, I think, visiting in the South Seas.
Wm. Bothwell
Contributing Editor