The name Triller used to be Trillberg. My great-grandfather was five years old when he emigrated with his parents by boat from Russia to Canada. The family then travelled by train to Winnipeg, which is where the only other Trillbergs outside of Russia lived, cousins who had intended to live in the United States but who had accidentally disembarked in Halifax, the ship’s next-to-last stop, and weren’t permitted back on board even after they realized their horrible mistake—a mistake that was then further compounded when they were told that the quota of Jews allowed to relocate to Toronto and Montreal had been reached and that they would have to reside in Winnipeg.
And even though my grandfather and his parents had come from a place where winters were severe, nothing had prepared them for wi
