About Us
Well, actually, it's just me. My name is Ted Nitchov. I was born in Toronto, Canada and I am proud Canadian. I am of an ethnic Macedonian descent - my father from the village of Banitsa and my mother from Dambeni. Both my mother's parents are also from Dambeni.

I took an interest in the village of Dambeni because so little of it was known to me. Many people who grew up in the village would like to forget what happened to them - but that leaves their children at a disadvantage. They don't know how hard it was to live in that time. They don't know what it was like to live like that. In countries such as Canada many of us forget or simply do not know how much worse it could be.

My father is from Banitsa and many of his relatives emigrated to Canada along with him, and so they have a fair amount of family with them. Dedo Pando Nitchov liked to talk about the past. A vast mine of information he is.

I knew very little about my mother's family from Dambeni. My dedo (grandfather) Todo Stanishev and baba (grandmother) Stoyana Ballova don't like to talk about what they went through - in fact, the reason they came to Canada was to escape the hardships they endured when they were growing up. My mother was a single child and not too many relatives. It wasn't until recently that I decided to dig into my mother's family history that I found out my grandmother's sister sang for "Kosturchanki" - a women's vocal group, and that my grandfather came from a family of five children, including one brother who emigrated to the United States and fought in World War II. 

This site is meant to educate those who are interested in the little village of Dambeni, in the foothills of the Kostur region of Aegean Macedonia. .

Ted Nitchov