TORONTO -- Igor Gouzenko's eight children did not learn until they were old enough to get a driver's license that their father was the celebrated defector who turned over Soviet intelligence data to the west, his widow says.
'Once, my husband was interviewed with thehood on 'Front Page Challenge,' Mrs. Svetlana Gouzenko told the Toronto Star.
'He had disguised his voice so well, they (the children) didn't recognize him. That was so funny to my husband and me.'
The children learned about their father's past when 'they got their driver's license, when they were 16 to 18,' she said.
Gouzenko, who died last June, was a cipher clerk in the Soviet embassy in Ottawa when he defected in 1945, providing western intelligence with detailed documentation on Soviet espionage activities.
The eldest son was shocked when he learned the truth, Mrs. Gouzenko said.
'He was a hockey fan, such a red-blooded Canadian, that to him the Russian hockey players were the villains. He was shocked that he had blood of the villains in his blood too.'
The other children were surprised by the revelation but not alarmed, she said. The children have read their father's book about his defection, 'The Iron Curtain,' and have been shown many newspaper clippings.
