Two young children cling to each other tightly. Nearby, luggage is being loaded into a car. It's time for the siblings to be parted. Olga is being adopted and moving to Canada but her older brother, Dimitri, has to remain in the orphanage. "Leaving him behind was the most difficult thing I've had to do", confides Olga's new mother, Claire. "He recognised there was no hope for him. No one wanted him. He was too old."

Not only is Olga leaving her friends, family and country behind but she's also getting a new identity. Worried that children will tease her, her parents have renamed her Kira. Coming with her to Canada is Lara, a bubbly young girl who's been adopted by John and Francine Neils. The Neils were initially told that Lara was abandoned at birth. Then, the day before the adoption, they learnt she'd been taken into care when she was four. "Maybe she was abused. We don't know", fears Francine.

Eight months later, Lara is still struggling to settle in. "She was very frustrated at not being able to communicate and felt very angry and bitter," recalls Francine. "She felt very loyal towards the people she left behind in Russia, especially her mother." Lara hoards away all her pocket money for her birth mother and speaks often of returning to Russia to see her.

In contrast, Kira has effortlessly adapted to her new home. But she's haunted by the brother she left behind. "He didn't want me to leave because he didn't want to be alone." Everyone knows his prospects in Russia are bleak. Orphans have a one in three chance of ending up on the street and a one in ten chance of committing suicide. Claire and her husband Gary can't forget him either. They decide to bring him over to Canada on a student visa.

But being older, he finds it much harder to adapt. "You expect him to understand and appreciate all that you've done but he just behaves like a normal teenager and that's a little hard to swallow", confides Clare. And - as Dimitri and Kira have another eight siblings in various other orphanages - Dimitri soon is pushing for his older brother, Sergi, to move to Canada.

Gary and Claire arrange for Sergi to come over but Sergi starts talking about bringing his other sisters over. The older boys also pressure Kira to contact their birth mother, who abandoned them all when she remarried. "They said Claire isn't my real mother. The other mother is my mother", states Kira. She wants nothing more to do with her biological family.

Three years on, both girls have assimilated fully. They talk with perfect Canadian accents and Kira has forgotten Russian. But - like other adoptees - their early experiences will continue to shape them in ways no-one can predict.