From Genocide to Diaspora and Beyond

Review of Lorne Shirinian’s My Family, Surviving Genocide, Becoming Canadian
(Toronto, Blue Heron Press, 2026)

By Prof. Alan Whitehorn, Kingston ON, 2 June 2026

Inter-generational grief and trauma are reoccurring themes of the extended global Armenian community. As such, survivor memoirs are a major component of our contemporary literature. Relatedly, there have been important examples of books that explore the biographies of extended Armenian families. Quite notably is distinguished poet Peter Balakian’s extraordinarily influential Black Dog of Fate (1997), which explores his life growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey and traces the familial links back to Bishop Krikoris Balakian, an illustrious survivor of the 1915 genocide. Another quite impactful volume is Garin Hovannisian’s Family of Shadows: A Century of Murder, Memory, and the Armenia American Dream (2010) which outlines the remarkable family odyssey from a genocide survivor, followed by pioneering Armenian historian and genocide scholar Richard Hovannisian, to Richard’s son Raffi Hovannisian, who would become Armenia’s first minister of foreign affairs and later a prominent Armenian politician. Armen Marsoobian’s Fragments of a Lost Homeland: Remembering Armenia (2015) provides a fascinating photo-filled history of the Dildilian family from the Hamidian Massacres of the Ottoman Empire in the 1890s, through the 1915 Genocide to the expulsions from Turkey in the early 1920s. Dawn Anahid MacKeen’s The Hundred Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey (2016) describes episodes of her grandfather’s ordeal surviving the mass deportations of the Armenian Genocide. Each historic chapter is followed by a contemporary account of her own odyssey to travel the same route a century later.

Lorne Shirinian’s My Family, Surviving Genocide, Becoming Canadian is a loving account of the lives of his parents, Mampre and Mariam, both orphans of the Armenian Genocide, who became two prominent members of the Georgetown Boys and Girls. In several groups, just under a total of 150 orphans were brought in the early 1920s from overseas to a Canadian-based Armenian orphan group home on the outskirts of Toronto. The initial group was exclusively boys, but later a smaller number of girls also arrived. Lorne Shirinian had previously written a new introduction to and edited the reissued and expanded edition of Jack Apramian’s The Georgetown Boys (2009), the definitive account of this pioneering Canadian humanitarian project. The earlier edition had originally appeared in 1976.

Understandably, in this new family memoir, Lorne Shirinian focuses on the experiences of his parents, first as orphans overseas, then the challenges of growing up as young immigrants in a country so far from their ancestral homeland. Canada at that time was not overly receptive to foreigners from a significantly different culture, history and genealogy. Authorities even tried to change the orphans’ Armenian names to English ones and turn them into rural farmers. After his parents married, they commenced to raise a young family and remained active in the local Toronto Armenian community. Initially they had opened a small corner grocery story, but later moved to a new and expanded location. Lorne Shirinian outlines how his father worked hard as an immigrant to fit in the Canadian economy, first as a small shop owner, and then, as an insurance broker. Mampre Shirinian even contemplated changing his last name to improve his prospects for a more successful integration into a largely Anglo-Saxon North American culture. As a second generation growing up as an Armenian-Canadian, Lorne recalls his difficulty, and even teenage resistance, to learning the Armenian language in a suburban environment. This is an ongoing issue in the global Diaspora, as we move from second to third or even fourth generations post-1915. While the earlier generations in the 1890s and 1915-1923 faced the threat of physical annihilation, later generations have needed to deal with the long-term challenges of assimilation.

One of the paths to sustaining Armenian identity is to foster greater education of not only important language skills, but also greater awareness of Armenian history and culture. In this regard, both Lorne and his brother George Shirinian have dedicated their lives to fostering greater understanding about Armenian history in general and the 1915 Genocide in particular.

George Shirinian served for a number of years as Executive Director of the Zoryan Institute and authored numerous articles and edited important volumes such as the pioneering Studies in Comparative Genocide (1999) and later books such as The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide (2012) and The Greek Genocide: 1913-1923: New Perspectives (2019). He also served informally as a crucial mentor to me in my work as editor of the encyclopedia The Armenian Genocide: The Essential Reference Guide (2015).

Lorne Shirinian is a wide-ranging author: poet, playwright, novelist, memoirist and literary scholar. Examples of his numerous books include Earthquake (poetry), Memory’s Orphans (fiction), Exile in the Cradle (drama) So Far from Home (memoirist), Survivor Memoirs of the Armenian Genocide; Quest for Closure: The Armenian Genocide and The Search for Justice in Canada (literary and cultural criticism).  Of course, Lorne was a mentor and co-author with me of The Armenian Genocide: Resisting the Inertia of Indifference (2001), a collection of our essays and poems, largely intended for the political education of Canadian Members of Parliament on the eve of their vote on recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

An interesting aspect of Lorne Shirinian’s book is the account of how many of the former Georgetown Boys orphans continued to stay touch with each other, and in doing so embraced their surrogate adopted extended family. They also often visited in large numbers to the always-welcoming Shirinian family home. At just over a hundred pages, with numerous family photos, My Family, Surviving Genocide, Becoming Canadian is a thoughtful and informative account of the resilience and dedication of the extended Shirinian family. Mampre was extensively involved in Armenian church and cultural activities. Through the sons Lorne and George, the family has had a significant and sustained impact on the Armenian community, both in Canada and globally. I wish this book would have offered more detailed accounts about the genocide-related publications and valuable scholarly work by both Lorne and George. As a fellow Armenian-Canadian and grandson of an orphan of the Armenian Genocide, I am profoundly grateful for their life-long commitment to remember and honour those brave ancestors. I am sure that their parents Mampre and Mariam were exceptionally proud of their sons and their valuable work. Lorne Shirinian’s My Family, Surviving Genocide, Becoming Canadian is wonderful tribute to two Georgetown orphans who became Canadian and so much more.

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Alan Whitehorn is an emeritus professor at the Royal Military College of Canada and was the first holder of the JS Woodsworth Chair in Humanities at Simon Fraser University in 1994-1996. As an academic, he writes on the topics of genocide, human rights, political parties and elections. As an award-winning poet, he explores the issue of genocide and its impact on Armenian-Canadian identity. Amongst his published books: Poems from the Diaspora: An Armenian Odyssey/Poesie dalla Diaspora: un’odissea armena; The Armenian Genocide: The Essential Reference Guide; Return to Armenia/Veradardz depi Hayastan; Just Poems: Reflections on the Armenian Genocide; Ancestral Voices: Identity, Ethnic Roots and a Genocide Remembered; The Armenian Genocide: Resisting the Inertia of Indifference (co-author with Lorne Shirinian). His family biographical chapter “In Genocide’s Shadow: The Armenian Genocide and A Diaspora Existential Journey” in Saghar Shahidi-Birjandian & Sarah Seiselmyer-Snyder, eds., Intergenerational Survivors of Genocide and Mass Atrocities: Lived Experiences of Knowledge Providers (Routledge) is scheduled to appear this summer.

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Photos:
Georgetown Boys Around the Farm
Aris Alexanian Photo Collection (1923-27)