My life story book “To the Horizon and Beyond”, 277 pages, 8 ill.,Trafford Publ.,2003, ISBN1-4120-0036-X, National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication.

Every person has his or her life story, I believe. It is a matter of collecting it and putting it together. That’s what I have done when I first came to Canada twelve years ago to get married to a British-Canadian John Pattison, who was curious about me, my life in Russia in those times when there was an iron curtain between West and East. I was from the Eastern part, he was from the Western. For the first time in my life I was idle, did not work neither full nor part time, I came by visitor visa without the work permit. This is Canada, not America. Sitting at home and cooking while my husband is gone for work is not a big deal. He saw me writing letters back to St. Petersburg, Bryansk, my native towns, and then thoroughly translating to him. Upon completion of such a business he used to ask me in surprise: “How can you write about the same every day life finding all the time newer and newer words? Where can you find them? You are able to write a book, your own life story. We are sick and tired of big politicians’, sportsmen’s stories. We here want to listen to rank-and-file people’s stories like you, Val. Go ahead and write, you can do it, I see it to myself.” And I did it.
Born on March 17, 1940, St. Patrick’s Day, being celebrated by Irish people and not only by them, everywhere in the world, except Russia, I had a better chance to succeed in life than there plus a very good moral support from my husband who was my first proof reader and left my narrative as it was in English for Canadian people as himself. So it is not just a personal narrative of myself, my family, it is a Soviet Union history, starting with Revolution in 1917-1921 when my mama lived and the 20-th century and social conditions of that period. Because without the country who raised you up, your own family who fed you and supported you through all your span life, we are big little zeros. My book is my way to say: “Thank you to all in Russia and in Canada who gave me inspiration and keeps doing it now, who fills me with a great sense of real life.”