The Romanov The Bolsheviks Forgot To Kill: How Russia's Last Royal Lived A Quiet Canadian Exile

The Romanov the Bolsheviks forgot to kill:
How Russia's last royal lived a quiet Canadian exile

Her Ontario neighbours knew the Grand Duchess only as a simple immigrant grandmother who occasionally had a visit from the Queen

Author of the article:
Mark Hill, Special to National Post
Publishing date: Aug 04, 2021




Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna. PHOTO BY WIKIPEDIA
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While you were busy memorizing interminable details about Responsible Government or Laura Secord, you missed out on some of the best parts of our national story: Secret Nazi weather bases, Mackenzie King’s extremely weird sexuality or the fact that Canada has been a surprise bit player in everything from the breakup of the Beatles to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to the fall of Communism. Hopefully we can rectify things somewhat in a new occasional series, The Secret History of Canada, documenting the little-known (and often R-rated) parts you missed. Today, how a nondescript Toronto apartment quietly became the last bastion for one of the most powerful dynasties that ever was.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW

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When Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia was born on the grounds of Saint Petersburg’s Peterhof Palace in 1882, the birth was announced with a 101-gun salute. As a child, Christmases saw her showered with hundreds of presents that had taken armies of servants to wrap and prepare. One of her wedding gifts after her 1901 marriage was a 200-room house.


She met Grigori Rasputin, came under Austrian shellfire during the First World War and escaped a Bolshevik firing squad due to a clerical error. At the time of her death, she would be the last living link to what had been one of the most powerful dynasties in history.
But to her neighbours in what is now Mississauga, she was just “Olga,” an old immigrant grandmother known to wear gumboots who just happened to have an eye-popping jewellery collection.



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Olga was the daughter and sister of a Tsar.

Her father, Tsar Alexander III, was dead by the time she was 12,
causing her oldest brother “Nicky” to assume the throne.

Olga would later reflect that her sensitive brother was “unfit”
to suddenly take charge of the world’s largest land empire.

“Even at that time I felt instinctively that sensitivity and kindness
on their own were not enough for a sovereign to have,”
she said in her 1965 biography.

While Olga’s mother had long groomed her for the stifling,
hoop-skirted life of a Russian blue-blood, the duchess
had always craved a simple rural life
(albeit one enhanced by thousands of servants and bottomless wealth).

When Olga turned 19, a surprise marriage proposal
by an older distant cousin, Duke Peter Alexandrovich,
seemed to offer an escape.

But the marriage was a sham.

Alexandrovich — believed to be a closeted gay man
pushed into the marriage by his own ambitious mother
— spent their wedding night pulling an all-nighter at a gambling den.


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Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna
with her first husband Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg.
PHOTO BY FILE

Their union was never consummated,
so Olga took up instead with a cavalry officer
named Nikolai Kulikovsky.

Her husband sportingly named Kulikovsky
his aide-de-camp and allowed the young man
a room in the massive family home.

Olga came of age in a Russia increasingly wracked by assassinations
and civil unrest.

In 1905, she was hit with shattered glass as revolutionaries
fired on the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg.

When a charismatic Russian holy man named Rasputin
inserted himself into the Tsar’s inner circle,
Olga said she was completely immune to his charms,
saying he was “neither as impressive nor as exciting as people think.”

When the First World War began, the pampered Duchess
followed a regiment named after her to the front lines,
and was soon working 15-hour days in a hospital
that was occasionally subject to Austrian fire.

Olga was still nursing when the 1917 revolution
forced her brother from power
— although, just before Nicholas II’s abdication,
he granted Olga an annulment
in order to marry Kulikovsky.

The newlyweds soon fled to Crimea with Olga’s mother and sister,
and it was while under Bolshevik house arrest that Olga
gave birth to her first son.

While Nicholas II and his family would be gunned down
in the basement of a home in Yekaterinburg in 1918,
Olga was saved by an early hiccup in communist bureaucracy.

The Yalta and Sevastopol Soviets bickered over whose responsibility Olga was,
and before they could resolve their dispute they were kicked out of Crimea
by the invading Imperial German army, who in turn surrendered
the port to White Russian loyalists.


Olga and Nikolai tried to ride out the Russian Civil War
in the Caucasus, but when Bolshevik victory became inevitable,
they fled to Denmark, eventually settling at a modest farm
that became a tourist destination for Russian monarchists.

The cellar room where Tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed
by their Bolshevik captors in 1918.
PHOTO BY FILE

It was there that Olga’s exile would have continued if not
for Soviet victory in the Second World War,
which left the Red Army decamped all along the Danish border
— threatening to ensnare Olga’s family in the waves of figures
being “disappeared” by Moscow’s post-war solidification of power
in Eastern Europe.

And so in 1948, at the age of 66, the Grand Duchess
and her family packed aboard a troopship
and joined the thousands of other “displaced persons”
setting sail for Canada.

By selling off Olga’s Romanov jewels her maid smuggled out of Russia,
the couple purchased a 200-acre farm in Campbellville, Ont.,
and took an immediate liking to the country,
with the former Grand Duchess saying,
“the vast open spaces remind me of Russia
and gave me a feeling of comfort.”

Nikolai worked the farm, their son Tikhon launched a career
with the Ontario Highways Department,
and Olga tended the chickens and took up painting.

While they lived modestly,
she was able to use her famous name to have her work
exhibited at Eaton’s College Street in Toronto.

Children in the Park, one of an estimated 2,000 paintings
by Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna.
PHOTO BY SOTHEBY'S

While Olga never hurt for cash
— she left her inheritors about $200,000 in stocks and bonds
— she lived frugally and harboured no illusions
about a dramatic return to power.

Posthumous biographer Patricia Phenix told the Toronto Star
that she let neighbourhood children play with her Faberge jewellery.

She also dutifully fielded up to 30 letters a day from admirers,
royalty, old members of her regiment
— and an endless succession of would-be scammers.

The bodies of the murdered family of Tsar Nicholas II
wouldn’t be identified for decades, leaving grifters
and the deluded to claim they were missing nieces and nephews.

“The American continent,” Olga noted, “was particularly suited
to producing (imposters).”

One woman travelled from Illinois to insist she could
recognize Olga based on her upper lip,
a Frenchman said trauma had made him forget how to speak Russian,
and a Spanish woman wrote a long letter insisting she was the real Olga.

The legal action the imposter threatened never materialized.

Olga’s memoirs would call her Canadian farm days
some of the happiest of her life.

She took long walks where she recognized flowers from her Russian youth,
and the long, cold winters were nostalgic to her.

But by 1952 the farm had become too much work for the aging couple,
so they settled into a suburban home in Cooksville, Ont.,
now part of Mississauga.

2130 Camilla Rd.,
Olga’s home in what is now Mississauga, Ontario Canada
PHOTO BY GOOGLE STREET VIEW

After Nikolai’s death in 1958,
and with her own health deteriorating,
in 1960 Olga moved into a small apartment
above a beauty salon
on Toronto’s Gerrard Street
to be cared for by a Russian emigrant couple
she had befriended.

It was where, on Nov. 24,1960
Olga died as Russia’s last Grand Duchess,
with about $50 worth of clothing in her closet.

She was buried next to her husband in Toronto’s York Cemetery
and, while the Soviet embassy didn’t send any official representatives,
her funeral was a chance for Canada’s exiled Russian monarchists
to show the flag.

Only once during her Canadian exile would Olga get a brief taste
of the life that could have been.

In June 1959, Queen Elizabeth II was on a royal tour to Canada
and decided to call on her distant cousin for a meal.

The frail Grand Duchess, who had only a few more months to live,
had to be convinced by her neighbours to buy a new frock for the occasion
(Olga thought she was “far too old to start buying new clothes”)
and she was feted at the head table aboard
the 126-metre-long royal yacht Britannia.

Olga’s memoirs sometimes reveal a self-important view
of the monarchy’s place in Russian history,
but she successfully predicted that communism
would suffer a slow disintegration rather than a military defeat.

“The Kremlin,” she said, “will not find it easy to satisfy
an enlightened nation with nothing
but a series of hollow slogans,
spectacular nuclear successes,
and grandiose demonstrations in Red Square.”

Olga’s line survives today.

Her great-grandson Paul Edward Kulikovsky
maintains a Romanov Facebook page full of artwork and trivia,
and he hopes to use royal history to restore old-fashioned moral values.

Modern Russian monarchists have accused him
of exaggerating his importance within the bloodline,
and he sometimes drifts into historical revisionism
or potshots at other fringe Romanovs.

Most of Olga’s descendants share
her dismissive view of restoration.

Her grandson Leonid Kulikovsky,
who briefly served in the Canadian Army
but eventually made his way to Australia
to live a happy life as a manual labourer,
was so indifferent to his famous ancestry
that it took two months after his 2015 death
for officials to make the connection.

 

artile from here:
https://nationalpost.com/news/canad...2TF75brqm6qViqugJxArqOltJY#Echobox=1628072679
The Romanov the Bolsheviks forgot to kill: How Russia's last royal lived a quiet Canadian exile | National Post

 

Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna Kulikovskaya (Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov) MP

Russian: Великая Княжна Ольга Александровна Куликовская (Романова), Lithuanian: Olga Aleksandrovna Romanova

Gender:	Female
Birth:	June 13, 1882 Cottage Palais, Peterhof/Петергоф, Saint-Petersburg/Санкт-Петербург, Russia (Russian Federation)
Death:	November 24, 1960 (78) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Place of Burial:	York Cemetery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Immediate Family:	Daughter of Alexander III Alexandrovich Romanov, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and Maria Feodorovna, Empress consort of Russia Wife of Nikolai Alexandrovich Kulikovskу Ex-wife of Peter Friedrich Georg von Oldenburg, Prince Mother of Tikhon Nicholaevich Kulikovsky and Guri Nikolaevich Kulikovsky Sister of Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia; Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich of Russia; Grand Duke Georgii Alexandrovich of Russia; Grand Duchess of Russia Xenia Alexandrovna Romanov and Grand Prince Mikhail Alexandrovich Romanov
Added by:
Managed by:
Curated by:	Henn Sarv

 

Olga Aleksandrovna Romanov, Grand Duchess of Russia is your 14th cousin once removed.

You - susan lynne schwenger


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Lyn aka Lynda Mae Handy - Schwenger
your mother

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Edward Handy
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Charles Wesley Handy
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Jane Orme - Handy of Brackagh (Bracca) Castle of Coolalough (Collolalough)
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Anne Jackson - Orme
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Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset
her father

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Elizabeth Woodville, Queen Consort of England
his mother

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Elizabeth of York
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Margaret Tudor, Queen consort of Scots
her daughter

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Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox
her daughter

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her son

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his son

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his daughter

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her daughter

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George I, King of Great Britain and Ireland
her son

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his son

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his daughter

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her son

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his son

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Queen Consort Louise Wilhelmine Friederikke Karoline Auguste Julie of Hesse-Kassel, Consort of Denmark
his daughter

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Maria Feodorovna, Empress consort of Russia
her daughter

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Olga Aleksandrovna Romanov, Grand Duchess of Russia
her daughter

 

Edward IV of England is your 7th cousin 15 times removed.
Mathilde van Brabant is your 21st great grandmother.
You
Susan Lynne Schwenger

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Lyn aka Lynda Mae Handy - Schwenger
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Edward Handy
his father

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his father

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his mother

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Anne Jackson - Orme
her mother

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Jane Cuffe of Ballinrobe - Jackson
her mother

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Right Hon. James Cuffe of Ballinrobe
her father

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Alice Aungier - Cuffe
his mother

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Ambrose Aungier
her father

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Douglas Aungier
his mother

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Edward Fitzgerald, MP
her father

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Elizabeth Fitzgerald
his mother

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Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset
her father

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Elizabeth Woodville, Queen Consort of England
his mother

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Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Countess Rivers
her mother

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Pierre I de Luxembourg, comte de Saint Pol
her father

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Jean de Luxembourg, comte de Saint Pol
his father

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Mahaut of Chatillon
his mother

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Jean de Châtillon, comte de Saint-Pol
her father

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Guy III de Châtillon, comte de Saint Pol
his father

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Mathilde van Brabant
his mother
Mathilde van Brabant is your 21st great grandmother.


EditEdit profile photo
Mathilde van Brabant

Spanish: Mafalda de Brabante

Gender:	Female
Birth:	December 24, 1224 Flanders, Brabant, Netherlands (now part of Belgium)
Death:	September 29, 1288 (63) Abbaye de Cercamp, Artois, France
Place of Burial:	Abbaye de Cercamp, Artois, France
Immediate Family:	Daughter of Henry II, duke of Brabant and Maria von Hohenstaufen Wife of Robert I the Good, count of Artois and Guy II de Châtillon, comte de Saint Pol Mother of Blanche of Artois; Robert II, count of Artois; Guy III de Châtillon, comte de Saint Pol; Beatrice (Beatrix) de Châtillon; Hugues Ii de Châtillon-Blois; Jeanne de Châtillon; Lord of Leuze, Condé, Carency Jacques de Châtillon-Leuze and Gertrude de Châtillon « less Sister of Lady Matilda van Brabant de Sutton; Beatrix van Brabant, Gravin van Vlaanderen; Maria of Brabant; Duke Henry III of Brabant; Filips van Brabant and 2 others Half sister of Elizabeth van Brabant; Hendrik van Brabant, Landgraf von Hessen and Adelheid Landgräfin von Hessen
Curated by:	<private> Pilla Damasio

 

Charlemagne is your 34th great grandfather.
You - susan lynne schwenger


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his father

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Charles Wesley Handy
his father

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his mother

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Anne Jackson - Orme
her mother

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Jane Cuffe of Ballinrobe - Jackson
her mother

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Right Hon. James Cuffe of Ballinrobe
her father

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Alice Aungier - Cuffe
his mother

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Ambrose Aungier
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Edward Fitzgerald, MP
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Elizabeth Fitzgerald
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Cecily Bonville, 7th Baroness Harington
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Catherine Bonville, 2nd Baroness Hastings
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his father

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Lambert I, count of Louvain
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his father

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By PHGCOM - Own work by uploader, photographed at Cabinet des Médailles, Paris., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5729324
Carolus 'Magnus', Rex Francorum & Imperator Romanorum MP

Latin: Karolus 'Magnus', Rex Francorum & Imperator Romanorum, French: Carolus, Magnus, Portuguese: Carlos Magno, Rex Francorum & Imperator Romanorum, Estonian: Karl Suur, Rex Francorum & Imperator Romanorum, Finnish: Kaarle Suuri, Rex Francorum & Imperator Romanorum

Gender:	Male
Birth:	April 02, 742 Unknown, Likely in present Belgium (Herstal) or Germany
Death:	January 28, 814 (71) Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Place of Burial:	Royal Church of St. Mary (present Aachen Cathedral or Kaiserdom), Aachen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Immediate Family:	Son of Pépin III, King of the Franks and Bertha Broadfoot of Laon, Queen of the Franks Husband of Desiderata of the Lombards; Hildegard of Vinzgouw; Fastrada and Luitgard Partner of Himiltrude; Gerswinde of Saxony; Madelgarde of Lommois; Amaltrud of Vienne; Regina; and Ethelind « less Father of Amaudra; Pippin the Hunchback; Charles 'the Younger', King of the Franks; Pépin, king of Italy; Adalhaid and 15 others Brother of Carloman I, King of the Franks; Gisele, Abbess of Chelles; Pepin; Chrothais; Adelais; NN mother of Chunibert daughter of Pepin and NN mother of Sintpert daughter of Pepin « less
Added by:	Jean Paul Ancey on January 25, 2007
Managed by:	Margaret (C) and

 

The Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna,
daughter of Tsar Alexander III and sister of Tzar Nicholas II of Russia,
lived in Cooksville, Mississauga, Ontario
at 2130 Camilla Road from 1952 to 1960.

She died November 24 1960 and is buried in York Cemetery.
Tomb of the Grand Duchess, Olga Alexandrovna of Russia

Subject
Olga Alexandrovna, Grand Duchess of Russia, 1882-1960

 

Olga Alexandrovna Romanov

BIRTH	14 Jun 1882 Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg Federal City, Russia
DEATH	24 Nov 1960 (aged 78) Toronto, Toronto Municipality, Ontario, Canada
BURIAL	York Cemetery Toronto, Toronto Municipality, Ontario, Canada
PLOT	Section 15, Lot 254
MEMORIAL ID	4175

 

Russian Royalty.

Born in Alexandria Palace, Peterhof, Russia,
she was the youngest child of Czar Alexander III and Maria Fyodorovna, formerly Princess Dagmar of Denmark.

At 19 Olga's marriage was arranged to Prince Peter of Oldenburg, but it ended in divorce.

During World War I, she worked as a nurse on the Russian front and in November 1916,
married Captain Nikolai Kulikovsky with whom she would have two sons, Tikhon and Guri.

After the 1917 Revolution, she and her husband fled Russia and lived in Denmark until 1948.

Following World War II, Stalin's propaganda machine declared that Grand Duchess Olga
had conspired with Germany against Russia during the war.

In 1948, with threats against her life, she and her husband left Denmark,
moving to Canada where they spent the rest of their lives.

Olga played the violin and painted.

She produced over 2,000 paintings in her life.

Works by Grand Duchess Olga are in the collections of HM Queen Elizabeth II, HRH the Duke of Edinburgh,
HM King Harald of Norway, the Ballerup Museum, Denmark, and private collections in the United States,
Canada, and Europe.

Olga never lived with any delusions of grandeur or dreams of a Romanov return to power.

When her husband passed away in 1958, she moved to a small house in Cooksville (Mississauga)
where she died in near poverty.

(hmmm...in an upper middle class neighbourhood ???)
where her little home is likely now worth, over 1,000,000 cdn dollars.

She is interred next to her husband.

The funeral for the last Grand Duchess of Russia was attended by many Russian immigrants
to Canada who arranged a guard of honor.

 

Family Members
Parents

• 
  Alexander Alexandrovich Romanov
  
  1845–1894
• 
  Maria Fedorovna Romanov
  
  1847–1928

Spouses

• 
  Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg
  
  1868–1924 (m. 1901)
• 
  Nikolai Alexandrovich Kulikovsky
  
  1881–1958 (m. 1916)

Siblings

• 
  Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov
  
  1868–1918
• 
  Alexander Alexandrovich Romanov
  
  1869–1870
• 
  George Alexandrovich Romanov
  
  1871–1899
• 
  Xenia Alexandrovna Romanova
  
  1875–1960
• 
  Michael Alexandrovich Romanov
  
  1878–1918

Children

• 
  Tihon Nickolaevich Romanoff Kulikovsky
  
  1917–1993