From war to welcome: parish helps Ukrainians adjust to their new land

Under a rare blue sky on a balmy early-June morning, dozens of men, women, and children gathered outside a modern-looking three-storey parish centre in central New Westminster, awaiting their turn to enter ground-floor offices to fill out the papers that will help them start a new life in Canada.

They have all come to this country from war-ravaged Ukraine. Some, like Svitlana Skorokhodova, arrived in Canada only the day before. Others, like Serhii Kolodka, landed almost three months earlier.

But all have come on this morning to take advantage of the remarkable hospitality offered by the Holy Eucharist Ukrainian Catholic parish, which has become a local leader in providing material and spiritual assistance not only for those fleeing Ukraine, but also directly to the country itself. 

The early-June refugee event saw the parish open its Bishop Jerome Chimy Eparchial Centre  to a half-dozen agencies, such as Service B.C. and Service Canada, to allow them to offer “one-stop shopping” for newcomers needing to apply for such essential items as a social insurance number, a medical-services card, and a driver’s licence.

The parish has also sent money and materiel to Ukraine and has hired a team of workers to assist newcomers. 

When asked how his small parish became so involved in the ongoing humanitarian crisis, pastor Father Mykhailo Ozorovych, did not immediately point to an obvious connection – the cultural heritage of his parishioners.

Instead he noted that since 2018 his parish has had the honour of possessing a first-class relic of St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta – two strands of her hair.

“Mother Teresa said we ought to do small things with great love. And that’s how we operate,” Father Ozorovych said in an interview. “We know that we cannot help the thousands – the tens of thousands of people who need help.

“But those people we can help, we do it with great love. And we admit there is more that we can do. We embark on that path and do it to the best of our ability.”

Helping Ukraine and its citizens in their time of need is both a challenge and an opportunity – one that has been embraced by Catholics throughout the Lower Mainland.

Diane Chua, the Archdiocese of Vancouver’s Refugee Program Coordinator, has been busy contacting parish refugee committees and encouraging them to assist in settling Ukrainians. A few Catholics have now opened their doors to refugees, and several other placements are in the works.

Gloria Lowe, of St. Anthony’s Parish in West Vancouver, facilitated the placement of a refugee family with one of her fellow parishioners, a widower. Her work, she said, is fuelled by the compassion she feels for the refugees.

“I’ve heard their stories,” Lowe said, “and I look at the beautiful, wonderful life we live here, and I know I’ve got to get out and help them.” (See ‘This world is not without kind people!’, below, for more on the refugee family.)

At the New Westminster event, refugee Svitlana Skorokhodova said through an interpreter that after fleeing her hometown of Harkiv, she first travelled to Budapest, then to Vienna, then to Munich, and finally to Vancouver, where she was met by her sponsors, her childhood friend Irina Dzgoeva, and Irina’s husband, Vasile Zamfirescu.

Still recovering from her journey, the 52-year-old Skorokhodova said she had yet to form any impressions of Canada. “What will be, will be,” she said. “I just know that I want to be here, and I’m grateful that Irina reached out to me.”

Zamfirescu said the couple was happy to pay for their friend’s airfare and to give her a place to live. He said he was also grateful for the services being offered by Holy Eucharist, but he wished government agencies could help with additional expenses like dental care, medical examinations, and bus passes.

The Holy Eucharist community has launched extraordinary initiatives to meet the refugees’ needs, Father Ozorovych said, including the establishment of the Help Us Help Ukraine Foundation (uahelp.ca). It has also hired a fulltime employee to lead its Resettlement Program for Ukrainian Temporary Displaced Persons.

“We’ve never dealt with refugees in our parish, and now we have a whole team of people, six professionals, working to help Ukrainians find shelter here, harnessing the generosity of people around us in the Lower Mainland,” he said.

Father Ozorovych said that, from the first day of the war, his church embarked on a three-part ministry. “First, is to help as much as we can in getting some supplies that were available here and were not already available in Ukraine or Poland – medical supplies like tourniquets and Israeli bandages [a specially designed first-aid device used to stop bleeding],” he said. In the early months of the war, parishioners flew weekly to Frankfurt to deliver the supplies in person.

“Second, it was our ministry to volunteer,” he continued. “We had some regular Canadians who said, ‘I cannot watch this, I have a little bit of military experience, I am going to go and join the international battalion in Ukraine and fight for independence of Ukraine, for territorial integrity, and fight for freedom and democracy of the world.’”

Father Ozorovych said the parish helped outfit about a half dozen such volunteers with tactical gear and other equipment so they could join the fight.

The third ministry was to support refugees. “We knew right away there would be an influx of displaced people fleeing the war,” he said, “so we’ve hired people to help us deal with that. We have case workers, we have a coordinator of the program, a social worker, event organizer, and a meet-and-greet person.”

The parish also hired English teachers to help the newcomers before they became eligible for government assistance.

“Through our program, we have helped almost 300 people in one way or another. And we’ve also got monetary support with housing,” he said. “We’ve been blessed with generosity from businesses and different companies with gift cards for grocers. So we disburse all of them.”

About 60 individuals obtained assistance through the parish government-services event, the second held by the parish.

Volunteer Svyat Lashkevycha provided translation services and helped direct newcomers. “This is our contribution, helping alleviate the suffering, and reducing the stress they are feeling,” said Lashkevycha, a 33-year-old North Vancouver resident who is a law student at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. “We know how important it is to provides this help. We do it because we want to, regardless of our faith. It’s just natural.”

Refugee Kolodka, 37, said that while he and his three children had been able to flee from Lviv to Canada almost three months earlier, his wife Maria, 36, had to stay in Ukraine to fulfill a military obligation. She finally arrived only the day before and was now inside the church hall filling out papers while he waited anxiously outside.

Kolodka said he was grateful that a host family in New Westminster was providing rooms for his family. He is hoping to find work as a portrait painter and as a writer of icons. “Iconography is my biggest passion,” he said with a smile.

He said his strong connection to the Ukrainian Catholic Church is what led him to decide to settle in Canada, a country where his church had planted roots. “I feel some kind of protection, not only from government,” he said, “but from this community.”

‘This world is not without kind people!’

Ukrainian refugee Sasha Karpova and her family have found temporary housing in West Vancouver through the help of St. Anthony’s Parish. 

In response to a request for an interview about her experiences, Karpova said she was more comfortable writing English than speaking it, and so preferred texting her thoughts to The B.C. Catholic. Here is a lightly edited transcript of that communication:

We are a Ukrainian family and we come to Vancouver three weeks ago. My name is Sasha, I’m 33 years old, I have a son Ramtin, he is 10, and my younger sister Dasha, she is 21. We left our country in a hurry. 

Unfortunately, my mother (53 years old) and grandmother (87 years old) are still staying in Ukraine, they do not want to leave their home, because they have lived there all their lives and although they are in danger every day, they hope that they will stay alive and the war will end soon. Our family house is located in the village of Glevakha, between Kiev and Vasilkov.

It is on this territory that terrible military events [started at] 5 o’clock in the morning, 24 of February, and are still ongoing. Many houses have been destroyed and the house in which we lived is also in big danger. Military aircraft, fighter jets, rockets fly past it, bomb explosions and shots from military weapons are heard. 

We cannot now come back, live, and work in Ukraine. And I don’t think we’ll have a good future there.

We had to leave everything. When we were running away from the war, we drove for almost four days first to Poland. There was a very big traffic jam on the way, and we didn’t stop.

Then we temporarily lived in Germany. We do not receive financial assistance. We are helped by some good people who gave us rooms in their house. Only after 2.5 months we were able to come to Vancouver. We didn’t want to stay in Europe, we wanted to move to English-speaking country. I know that there is a very large Ukrainian diaspora in Canada and it is a country of immigrants, there really are all opportunities for our good future here.

When we arrived in Vancouver, the Red Cross gave us a hotel for two weeks in the city of Richmond. And then we met Gloria [Lowe] who helped us move to West Vancouver, because she has a good friend who let us stay with him until we can rent an apartment.

This world is not without kind people! I am very grateful to everyone. We are very happy that we chose Canada and the most beautiful city of Vancouver to live. This is our new home now. We feel very good and safe here. There are very kind people here who help us.

There are many organizations and churches here that do not [abandon] people like us. We don’t feel alone anymore. We started our life with a clean page. And we are very grateful to many people who now continue to help us in everything. God bless these people! I will never forget their kindness.

I also hope that soon we will be able to see our family from Ukraine, we pray that everything will be good with them and the war will end quickly. We want to live in peace. And I want to tell new Ukrainians who come to Canada not to be afraid of anything, all difficulties can be overcome easily, because there are many people, organizations and churches who are always ready to help.