Orphan rescued by Port Moody couple holding celebratory concert

Article content

Natasha Kozak feels like she won the lottery of life.

“I really do,” she said. “I’m very, very thankful for the opportunities that I’ve had, that I wouldn’t have had if I stayed in Russia.”

Kozak was adopted in 1993 by her parents Wendy and Larry, and next month she will perform a concert for maybe hundreds of other adoptees and their families.

Born in Novosibirsk, a central Siberian city of 1.6 million, Kozak knows the name of her birth mother and biological maternal grandmother, and that’s it.

Article content

Her parents found her through intermediary Dave Rempel, a now-retired elementary school teacher and principal who had organized student exchanges and orphanage visits with states in the former Soviet Union.

Canadian students would bring medicine, clothes, food, vitamins, soap, anything that their counterparts in the former Soviet Union were short of. They even one year delivered three Canada geese for the Moscow Zoo.

The Vancouver Sun sent a reporter and photographer along on a 1992 trip and the newspaper published a 15-story feature.

Unable to have a baby themselves, the Kozaks approached Rempel after reading the series to see if he had any connections in Russia.

Rempel turned to a Russian school principal in Novosibirsk, and she knew someone at an orphanage. After a lot of discouragement, red tape, a failed coup attempt in the Russian capital, even Thanksgiving Day in Ottawa getting in the way, Natasha arrived in Port Moody at the age of 10 months.

Reading the beginning of an October 1993 news story about her adoption, which referenced how her parents “braved a revolution, foreign customs and a thick tangle of bureaucracy” to adopt her, Kozak said the article is framed and hanging on the wall of her parents’ home.

Article content

Article content

“My mom and dad are truly remarkable people,” she said. “I’m so thankful and appreciative.”

Besides singing and writing songs, Kozak teaches singing to kids, and it brings her joy to see some of her students begin to take part in competitions such as the PNE’s talent contest, in which she was a finalist as an 18-year-old in 2011.

“Singing has always been a passion of mine since I was little,” she said. “In all my home videos I was always singing songs. I’d write my own songs, put on shows and make everybody watch.”

Inspired by Adele, Etta James, Tracy Chapman and Brianna, Kozak also busks out front of Waterfront Station.

At the moment she has a single, Free, coming out in September and is in the early process of forming a new band.

“Reach out if you’d like to be part of a band,” she said with a laugh. “If you play guitar, I need you!”

And, for a few years now, when she’s not singing she’s an assistant to a chef at Christine Catering in Port Moody, but she would also love one day to return to Russia to give back what she was given.

“I’ve always wanted to go back and work in an orphanage,” she said. “Or, if I’m ever fortunate enough to have enough money, to build one, that would be an ultimate dream of mine.

Article content

Since connecting the Kozaks with Natasha (and two years later her younger brother Nikita), the Rempels have facilitated about 300 adoptions from Russia and other former Soviet states. One of the couple’s two daughters was subsequently adopted, and Rempel took early retirement in the mid-1990s to do it full time.

“It changed my life,” he said. “Well, I was an educator, which also changed my life, but (becoming an adoption facilitator) changed the focus of it.”

A devout Mennonite, Rempel dreamed at one time of becoming a clergyman, before studying education at the University of B.C. so he could minister to thousands of elementary school kids. His Maple Ridge acreage includes a bird sanctuary, complete with a flock of black swans his wife gifted him one Valentine’s Day.

The couple treasures the cards they get on Mother’s Day and Christmas from adoptees and their parents thanking them for being able to celebrate such days as families.

Having as many of those 300 families attend Kozak’s Aug. 24 concert will be like hosting a huge family reunion, Rempel said.

“It will be very touching, very rewarding.”

Article content

Families whose contact information he no longer has may contact Rempel at daverempel7@gmail.com or 604-462-7563 for concert information.

gordmcintyre@postmedia.com

x.com/gordmcintyre

Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don’t miss the news you need to know — add VancouverSun.com and TheProvince.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.

You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber: For just $14 a month, you can get unlimited access to The Vancouver Sun, The Province, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Vancouver Sun | The Province.

Article content