Freedom comes at a price.
That's the story Simon Ivascu and Wesley Pop live by, and will testify to it at the Innisfail Alliance Church on Dec. 3 at 7 p.m. during their Freedom Singers concert.
The men discovered the price of freedom when they fled their native Romania on foot and by car. The pair then boarded a ship in Italy and hid in a locked ceramics container. The ship then sailed for ports unknown to what turned out to be Montreal.
“We were in the totally dark container for two weeks,” said Ivascu. “We ran out of food, water and oxygen but God provided a miracle for us, and we survived.”
The men's journey had been dangerous from the moment they left Romania. Ivascu escaped to Italy in 1997 by walking across dangerous armed borders while Pop purchased a travel visa to arrive in Torino, where Ivascu had been living with his brother Stefan.
That was the easy part of the journey.
While in Italy, Simon found his brother Stefan and was hired to work with him at a pizza restaurant. It was not long until the pair of men moved to an area where they worked in construction and woodworking.
“In Italy, the pair were continually afraid of being caught by the police and asked for ID,” said Ivascu of the journey in their book, The Price of Freedom, which was published in 2007. “If they asked, and we did not have it, they would send us to prison and back home to Romania. Thankfully, we were able to avoid the police numerous times and before we left Italy Pop was given a 15-day order to leave Italy.”
The pair of men decided to leave Italy, but not go back to Romania where they were persecuted for their faith in God. America or Canada were their choices.
“I was introduced to Rica, a man who helped illegal workers escape from Italy for a price,” wrote Ivascu. “He would help us get into a container for a price bound for North America, which he did.”
Ivascu and Pop were sealed into the airtight container, which was eventually loaded onto a ship bound for Canada. They knew they were getting into a container but not one that was sealed off from oxygen. The two men were forced to cut themselves out of their steel prison with hacksaw blades and screwdrivers.
“After we realized even our lighters would not work due to the oxygen supply being depleted,” writes Ivascu of their struggle to stay alive, “we had to get out of the container, and once we escaped we were trapped in a cargo hold with two rusted hatches we could not open.”
The men prayed for rescue, that somehow they would be able to flag down one of the crew and get some food and water, which by then had already run out.
Their answer came when Wesley saw light around one of the closed hatches.
Ivascu pulled himself up to the hatch and crawled out to the deck only to collapse. The crew rescued Wesley and nursed them back to health.
“According to Captain Minsky,” writes Ivascu, “that hatch was never open in his 20 years of piloting the ship across the ocean. He could not explain it but I could.”
Meanwhile, upon their arrival in Canada, the men expected prison for their stowaway journey but instead found freedom. In 2004, they were both granted Canadian citizenship, five years after their near-death escape.
“Some people call it luck we survived, but prayer and faith in our God pulled us through,” writes Ivascu.
The men formed the Freedom Singers to celebrate their escape in 2004.
Since then they have been performing around North America sharing the story of their journey to freedom in Canada and the faithfulness of their God.
“We live in a free country, and we don't realize the value of our freedom. Bringing Simon and Wesley to Innisfail will serve to remind us how precious and how hard some people have to fight for what we consider normal,” said Elgar Newsham, concert organizer.
For more information on the concert contact the Innisfail Alliance Church at 403-227-6655 or go to freedomsingers.com.
Simon Ivascu
"According to Captain Minsky," writes Ivascu, "that hatch was never open in his 20 years of piloting the ship across the ocean. He could not explain it but I could."
