Donna Szöke

While their mother is dying in the modern Gimli, Manitoba hospital, two young children are told an important tale by their Icelandic grandmother about Einar the lonely, his friend Gunnar, and the angelic Snjofrieder in a Gimli of old.

At the height of the October Revolution during the 1919 allied intervention in Arkhangelsk, the exploits of one-legged Canadian soldier Lt. John Boles are told, after he is taken in from the cold by a dysfunctional Russian family and mistakes a local woman for his presumed dead lover.

The Invisible Hippo of Grief: An Adoption Story investigates the Canadian Baby Adoption Mandate Era (1945-1985) when over 400,000 newborns were adoption to new families. History reveals the babies were taken—most first mothers were not given informed consent, and were often subject to neglect, abuse, and dangerous medical procedures.