Nr. 26
EESTI ELU neljapäeval, 30. juunil 2022 — Thursday, June 30, 2022
13
The 81st anniversary of the June 14th deportations Erik Kõvamees
TC Board Members at Tartu College.
Photo by Vincent Teetsov
The 2022 overview of Tartu College’s Annual Meeting of Members Vincent Teetsov On June 22nd, 2022, 14 Tartu College (TC) Board Members, in addition to six Members represented by proxy, con vened on-site for their Annual Meeting of the Members (AMM). While the past two years have been inordinately difficult for the not-for-profit corporation, the evening pro vided an optimistic outlook with regard to earnings, spending, investments, proper ty development, and internal operations. Overseeing the meeting was Jaan Meri, Chair of the Board of Directors and one of two representative Members for Korporatsioon Vironia. Only the 16 korporatsioonid (fraternities and sororities), and seltsid (societies) are allowed to elect Members to the AMM and all Board Directors must be Members. The sole exception is the Estonian Museum Canada which appoints 2 Directors to the TC Board bringing the total number of TC Members to 28. Of this group, three existing Directors – Reet Oolup, Allan Meret, and Andres Meri – were proposed and unanimously elected to continue in their positions. Terms are soon com ing to an end for Peeter Einola, Jaan Meri, and Anne Õsso. Recognizing the need for in volvement from new leaders, Tartu College will be encourag ing academic organizations to volunteer for the board this fall. All members of fraternities, sororities, and societies are eli gible to officially represent their organizations as Members. Among the first news circu lated to the Board during the meeting was regarding the Ontario Not for Profit Cor poration Act, legislated in the autumn of 2021. The law out lines rules regarding “keeping records, having annual meetings and filing annual returns” and more in the not-for-profit sector, as explained by the Province of Ontario. TC’s Bylaws will need to be updated to ensure their compliance to the new legislation within the next two years. From a financial angle, Peeter Einola gave a thorough overview of TC’s financial state ments and audit as con
ducted by MNP LTD. Speaking broadly, TC’s available cash at the end of 2021 had decreased to 334 thousand Canadian dollars from 349 thousand in 2020. Total debt has decreased steadily over the last three years: at the end of 2019, TC’s total debt amounted to 9,245 dollars, and at the end of 2022 it will be at 7,350 dollars. The income statement shows that revenues continued to be con strained, at 4.1 million dollars in 2020, and then 4.2 million dollars in 2021. Substantial Canadian government support was given: 636 thousand dollars in 2020 and 808 thousand dollars in 2021. Overall, the balance sheet indicates that “during the pan demic era, the total assets were essentially unchanged.” In addi tion, it was reported that TC will have their day in court on December 15th, to decide whether their property taxes should be taxed at the Resi dential Rate or Multi-Residential Rate. At the prompt of Tõnu Tõsine, MNP LTD was unani mously voted to be TC’s external auditor for another year. One of Tartu College’s necessary investments, adding to its 40 million dollar real estate value, are several capital projects and developments to the amenities of Tartu College. On the exterior, Tartu College is moving its garbage lift and expanding its garbage contain ment area to allow access to the back parking lot, at a cost of 135 thousand dollars. A dump ster moving machine has also been acquired. On the G floor, both the fra ternity and sorority rooms have been renovated, with a new flooring, sliding vapp (coat of arms) panels, cupboards, a multimedia TV screen, tables, and chairs for the fraternity room and a new kitchen, tables, chairs, and recovered couches on the way for the sorority room. Tartu College’s G floor also has long-standing agree ments with non-Estonian orga nizations such as the Academy for Lifelong Learning, for which revenue is generated through the rental of rooms during the week. Between the south facing student entrance and Master’s
Buffeteria entrance, Northern Birch Credit Union will be setting up a pop-up banking location, with office space, meeting rooms, and ATM machine. Moreover, a 10 suite renovation for 2023 and mort gage renewal in July 2022 have both been proposed. This is all taking place at the same time as many other developments in the neigh bourhood surrounding Tartu College. Just next door at 300 Bloor Street West, Bloor Street United Church is in the process of constructing a condominium tower that will be twice the height of Tartu College upon completion and feature a planned automated parking garage. To the west, at 320 Bloor Street West, another de velopment is planned, for which ScotiaBank, Pizza Pizza, and several other businesses will be replaced by a 37 storey high rise building. A new student residence is planned further south on the corner of Spadina Avenue and Sussex Avenue. And of course, next door to the north will be KESKUS and the new planned home of Esto nian Museum Canada (VEMU), both designed by Kongats Architects. With this in mind Tartu College’s General Manager, Linda Karuks, expressed her gratitude for the gradual return to normality at this time. TC is fully occupied for the school year, and now that summer language schools are operating again, summer revenue will be very high as well. Over 200 people are on the waiting list for occupancy in September, attracted by the quality and good value of the student residence. There were many organiza tional achievements to celebrate. Estonian Museum Canada has made its new legal name offi cial and has completed a rigorous branding exercise. Estonian Museum Canada’s Chief Archivist, Piret Noorhani, was given the Valgetähe teenetemärk (Order of the White Star award) by the President of Estonia, Alar Karis, this past week. Moreover, Eesti Elu’s web site is undergoing redevelop ment and re-design, led by Project Manager Elis Jaansoo
There is a commonly-held superstition that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day, and it appears to be the result of two different superstitions having converged1. The first superstition is that Fridays are evil days, because a Friday is the day of the week on which Jesus died. The second superstition is that the number 13 is a disreputable number, given that there were 13 attendees at the Last Supper. 81 years ago, in the June of 1941, there was a Friday the 13th. As Mart Laar has chro nicled2, on the night of June 13th towards the morning of June 14th, a deportation raid was undertaken in all parts of Estonia, intending to deport a total of 11 102 people from the country. People had gone to bed on the evening of Friday the 13th without any inkling of the upcoming raid, were woken up early by a pounding on their doors, were declared to be under arrest and subject to deportation without any court decision or legal process, were told that they had an hour to pack and that their property had been ad ministered for seizure, and were thereafter loaded into trucks and transported to railroad stations. From June 14th to June 16th, the search for individuals on the deportation list continued, and in total 9 254 people were captured, including pregnant women and seriously-ill elders. It was later reported that those carrying out the deportations behaved with extreme cruelty, and on June 17th, nearly 500 cattle cars or stock cars, spe cially set aside for the purpose, were overloaded with human beings and began a journey out of Estonia en route to Siberia. Many people died on their way to Siberia because of the transportation conditions, and many more died over the course of their first Siberian winter, on account of poor nourishment, the cold, and the taxing forced labour, not to mention shootings organized by on-site investiga tive commissions, who carried out interrogations and passed court decisions. In the end, only 4 331 people ever returned to their homeland of Estonia, or less than half of those who were abducted. And of the approximately 3 500 men who were dispatched to prison camps, only a couple of hundred survived, and upon and the Estonian design agency called Velvet, to boost its userfriendly properties. All of these residents and organizations make for a thriving Tartu College community. Anne Agur, along with the whole board, congratulated General Manager Linda Karuks for boldly leading Tartu College through the challenges of the
returning to their homeland, many were psychologically damaged and turned to alcohol. There are two more facts from Laar’s report worth point ing out. First, when the Republic of Estonia was in vaded, the leadership believed that surrendering the country without a fight would help them avoid the terror of the Red Army, a belief which proved to be untrue. And second, the de portations that were carried out were planned in a thoroughly systematic fashion (the Soviets had been collecting personal data and formulating liquidation lists already in the 1930s, for example). 81 years later, the idea be hind commemorating the opera tion that began unfolding on the evening of Friday the 13th, in the June of 1941, is to ensure that it does not happen again. Recent events, however, have shown that patterns of be haviour and justification repeat: The February invasion of Ukraine has been justified by the Russian state as a necessary process of “denazification,” just like how, in 1941, the invasion of Estonia and other countries was justified as a necessary process of removing “socially alien elements” from the Soviet Union. Given this historical repeti tion, one could argue that com memorating the deportations of 1941 has been a failure. But instead of viewing these re membrances in terms of their lack of success, one could also look at them in terms of what has been learned. Firstly, for instance, we now know that, unavoidably – and for those who value human life, tragi cally – breaking these historical patterns of behaviour and justi fication will necessarily involve a dimension of physical violence and death, and that this must be prepared for accordingly. Se condly, we know now that, on the grand scale, the deportations and/or invasions that we have heard about and witnessed – and the subsequent physical and psychological destructiveness they have brought about – have nothing to do with opportunism or the spontaneity of a moment, but are the products of syste matic deliberation and imple mentation. For those feeling discour aged, despaired, or outright hopeless, having learnt new things about the patterns of history – while these patterns (Continued on page 14)
last two years, to come out on top. Just as the Estonian commu nity’s physical presence in downtown Toronto is expand ing, one can look inside Tartu College and see a building that is bustling with positive developments, thanks to its leadership.
