Cuban defector to Newfoundland shows flair for hair

Globe and Mail/ Joan Sulliva/

Gander International Airport, a gem of mid-20th century modern design and a hub of global travel, was called the “Crossroads of the World.” The famous, from Nikita Khrushchev to Marilyn Monroe, lounged on its Herman Miller couches and strolled the Terrazzo floor. With advances in jet travel, celebrity sightings faded, but the airport retained its significant latitude and longitude on transatlantic flight paths.

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Gander, Nfld., was a refuelling stop for airlines, such as Cubana and Aeroflot, flying from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to Cuba, and was the site of mass defections. Among the hockey players, Olympic-level swimmers, scientists, ballerinas and artists who asked for asylum were people such as Phan Thi Kim Phuc, known as the Vietnamese girl photographed as she ran screaming with the pain of a napalm attack; she was returning to her studies in Cuba. Another example was the Soviet concert pianist and chess grandmaster Igor Vasilyevich Ivanov, who simply ran from his plane when it made an emergency refuelling stop.

Then there was Juan Perez, who left Cuba at age 17 to study for – and complete – an electrical engineering degree in Russia, and who defected in 1990 at Gander as his flight was refuelling. He wanted to make a new home, and to forge a new career.

Perez wanted to become a hair stylist. More >>