In a personal essay for CBC, Anna Lyhina argues that relocating from wartime Ukraine to Montreal transformed her understanding of silence, shifting it from a political absence to a personal barrier shaped by immigration and language loss.
Lyhina spent years studying silence for a PhD in Ukrainian literature, focusing on underground poet Hrytsko Chubai. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, she left her doctoral studies with four months remaining and bought a one-way ticket to Canada, as CBC reported.
Immigration felt less like a movement and more like disappearance, according to Lyhina. She arrived in Montreal carrying a single backpack, roughly $100, and no knowledge of French.
In her essay for CBC, she describes how losing her native language stripped away her social identity. While her humor and memories remained intact, they became inaccessible to those around her, forcing her to carefully rebuild her voice.
While volunteering with Montrealers experiencing homelessness, Lyhina noticed that many people kept their personal histories hidden. Men who had repaired airplanes in Moldova or walked across half countries assumed no one would care to listen.
“I didn’t think you’d be interested,” they told her, as CBC reported.
Recognizing the same self-doubt in her own hesitation to speak imperfect French, Lyhina realized that silence often stems from the fear that one’s words have no place in another person’s world. She ultimately concluded that nobody was keeping her silent, prompting her to start speaking before she felt completely ready.
