I won the ‘orphan lottery’ in Russia and Canada transformed my life

‘If you hadn’t been adopted, you’d be on the streets. Or dead.'

[2025/7/1] by Yahoo News

My Canada: From Baby House No. 1 in Russia to his upbringing in Canada, Corné Van Hoepen shares his understanding of the Canadian dream

It wasn’t until the lime-green S7 Airlines Airbus touched down on the sunbaked Siberian runway that it hit me, a strange, powerful feeling I couldn’t shake. For the first time in my life, I felt something close to home.

My story began at Baby House No. 1 in Novosibirsk, Russia, one of thousands of children left behind in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, a time when survival often meant giving up what mattered most.

In the early 1990s, international adoption became a growing conversation across Canada. Against all odds, I won what felt like the orphan lottery when a couple from British Columbia’s Fraser Valley chose me to be their own.

I was privileged to grow up on a farm in Chilliwack, surrounded by open fields, muddy boots and the kind of freedom most kids only dream about. I had a brother and sister adopted from Ukraine, and together with our cousins, we spent our days building forts in the back acreage, racing bikes down gravel paths and hiking up into the mountains to find secret lookouts perched high above the valley.

I always knew I was adopted, but that knowledge carried a quiet weight. I often felt like an outsider — like I’d been plucked from one world and dropped over 8,000 kilometres away into another that didn’t quite fit. Questions about my identity bubbled beneath the surface: Why was I given up? Did my “real” family look like me? Did they ever think about me the way I thought about them?

My adoptive family never shut down my questions. Instead, they listened with compassion and promised that one day, when I was ready, I could return to the place that had always whispered to a part of me they knew they couldn’t reach.

That day finally came when I turned 15-years-old.

My father and I embarked on the long journey over to Russia on what was supposed to be a roots trip — a chance to see where I came from, to walk the streets of Novosibirsk and to visit the orphanage that once cradled my earliest days. I thought I would feel like a visitor. I was wrong.

The moment the wheels touched the ground, a current of emotion surged through me. I didn’t have memories of this place, but my body did. The air smelled different. The language sounded both familiar and foreign. And everywhere I looked, I saw children who could have been me — some with hopeful eyes, others already hardened by what they had seen.

We visited the orphanage. It was quiet, timeworn and hauntingly familiar, as if the walls themselves remembered me. A caregiver named Ludmilla still knew my name. I had been known during my stay as Yura, derived from my birthname Yuri. She pointed to the small room where I used to sleep and said something I’ll never forget: "You were lucky. So many never leave."

That sentence lodged itself in my heart.

For the first time, I truly understood what I had been given — not just a home, but a future. A chance. I saw how fragile that opportunity was, how easily my story could have been different. That trip didn’t just show me where I came from; it rewired something inside me. It gave shape and meaning to the life I’d lived in Canada, filling in the blank spaces I hadn’t even known were missing.

My former caregiver didn’t sugarcoat what my life would have looked like if I wasn't adopted. She looked me in the eye and said, matter-of-factly, “If you hadn’t been adopted, you’d be on the streets. Or dead.”

The words hit harder than I expected. Not because they were cruel, but because I knew they were true.

I stood there, in the building where my life had started, trying to picture the version of me who never left. The boy who aged out of the system unnoticed. Who maybe learned to survive, but never had the chance to thrive. It was a version of myself I could almost feel in the walls — a shadow life I’d narrowly escaped.

I thought about my bedroom back home on the farm in Canada. A large, extended family who had embraced me with open arms. The quiet, everyday things I’d once taken for granted suddenly felt sacred. That moment cracked something open in me. Gratitude, grief, guilt — it all came rushing in at once.

I realized then that my story wasn’t just about where I came from. It was about what I did with the chance I’d been given.

To me today, being Canadian means more than just citizenship.

It means living with compassion, responsibility and a deep sense of purpose. I didn’t just inherit a new country; I inherited a second chance at life. As an adoptee, I view everything I have — my education, my freedom, my family — as a gift that countless others never received. That truth fuels something in me: a drive to give back, to live meaningfully, and to make my life count not just for myself, but in honour of the life I could have lived. Canada gave me the space to become who I am, and now it’s my turn to turn that privilege into purpose.

News from: Yahoo News