Do you think they will settle here forever? As the dark anniversary of the start of the Russian invasion approaches, Ukrainian refugees in Quebec balance tension and hope.
• Also read: After a year of war in Ukraine, here we have learned seven things about Vladimir Putin
“I lead a good life in Montreal, nothing can happen to me,” says Tatjana Reutskaja, who fled the rocket fire in her hometown.
Like them, many Ukrainians made the decision to adopt our country long-term, learn French, start from scratch.
Nora T. Lamontagne / LE JOURNAL DE MONTREAL
Little Arsen, 3.5 years old, developed some episodes after living in a bunker for long days, which have now disappeared.
But others are more mixed. If peace came tomorrow morning, they could return home. Or maybe not.
In any case, Nataliia Koshkina often thinks back to the house near Kharkiv into which she was preparing to move with her small family, just a few kilometers from a Russian-held area (see below).
“This desire to return is a completely normal reaction. Refugees didn’t choose to leave their country, it wasn’t that they dreamed of coming to Canada,” recalls Ghayda Hassan, professor of psychology at UQAM.
After the honeymoon
After the honeymoon that follows arrival, some are often disillusioned, says the expert on immigration and violence issues.
And then they often catch up with their feelings.
“I remember a babushka [grand-mère] who told me, “Emotions are made for the pillow at night,” illustrates Caroline Vézina, a registered nurse at the Capitale-Nationale Refugee Health Clinic in Quebec City.
The latter notes that very few Ukrainians have accepted the psychological help of the CUSSS.
The fear of the bereaved – an aging father, a son at the front, a single husband – is often mentioned in his counseling sessions.
“My mother lives in a city that is bombed every day. Today is no exception,” testifies Tatyana Reutskaya, who invariably calls him every morning.
From gynecologist to cook
Experts also point out that the loss of status – social, economic or professional – has a major impact on adult immigration records.
From a gynecologist in Chernigov, Lyudmila Chepurda became a cook in a day care center in Varennes. Despite this, she is determined to take a course in sexology and get back to work in her field.
Young children also suffer the consequences of this forced exile, points out Jean-Bernard Pocreau, co-founder of the specialized psychological support service for immigrants and refugees (SAPSIR).
Their symptoms range from behavioral or sleep disorders to hypervigilance, speech delay or urinary incontinence, he lists.
For example, after a long stay in a dark bunker at the beginning of the war, Arsen, the 3-year-old son of Liudmyla, could not help but pee, even though he had not been in a diaper for a long time. In the meantime the situation has improved.
Nora T. Lamontagne / LE JOURNAL DE MONTREAL
Little Arsen, 3.5 years old, developed some episodes after living in a bunker for long days, which have now disappeared.
But despite the ups and downs of the past year, all Ukrainians interviewed for this report expressed their immense gratitude to Quebecers who welcomed them, helped furnish their homes and encouraged them.
“I don’t feel like a passing guest here,” says 14-year-old Kiril Koshkin, who is now contemplating his future on this side of the Atlantic.
It is difficult to estimate how many of the 158,000 Ukrainians who arrived in Canada settled in Quebec. Governments don’t have statistics by province, but the Department of Health says nearly 10,000 have applied to the RAMQ.
His soul asks only to return to Kiev
MARTIN ALARIE / MONTREAL JOURNAL
Myroslava Polishchuk and her mother Natalka Poklad pose in front of the giant Ukrainian flag hanging in their living room in Côte-Saint-Luc
A well-known Ukrainian writer, who reluctantly left Kiev, expects to be home in a few weeks to see the hyacinths in bloom.
“Why do I want to go back? One might also wonder why the salmon come up the rivers every year,” answers Natalka Poklad, who is also a poet in her spare time, with a smile.
Despite the bombing and the daily water and power cuts that plague the Ukrainian capital, the sympathetic seventy-year-old’s will is unshakable.
“We tried to reason with her, to convince her, to explain to her that it’s going to be complicated, even to scare her. But there is nothing to do. His soul wants to return,” says his daughter, Myroslava Polishchuk, who has lived in Quebec for seven years.
It must be said that Natalka was never very enthusiastic about leaving her beloved homeland.
Nora T. Lamontagne / JdeM
Some of Natalka Poklad’s 30 books.
at 13e without electricity
It wasn’t until early November that she was persuaded by her youngest to come and live with her in Montreal.
“Can you imagine? She lived on the 13th floor and had to go up to her house without electricity, in complete darkness. At his age,” says Myroslava in her cozy living room in Côte-Saint-Luc.
“I always hoped that the bombing would stop, that the international community would help us, that the war would end before it collapsed,” his mother explains in Ukrainian.
But Natalka Poklad had to face the facts: the conflict dragged on, and her small apartment was already freezing. It had to be left.
hard arrival
Her first few days in Quebec were difficult, even if the colors of the leaves enchanted her. “I couldn’t write or think about anything but Ukraine,” she says.
She couldn’t speak French or English and was also “mute”, a tragedy for the author of more than 30 books in Ukrainian.
“Every day she told me that she wanted to return to Kiev. There was a lot of crying,” her daughter recalls.
It wasn’t just a matter of loving Montreal, its subway system, its multicultural society, its parks and its majestic buildings, she specifies.
Courtesy of Myroslava Polishchuk
Natalka Poklad discovered large parts of Montreal on her daily walks. We see it here near the Lachine Canal.
Eventually, Natalka regained some semblance of routine and never gave up the idea of returning to Kiev soon.
The author again writes short poems about war, winter and life, which she publishes on social networks.
Hope is never far away.
“Spring is coming,” she says confidently as light snow falls on Montreal.
A teenager who studies day and night
Nora T. Lamontagne / JdeM
Sofiia Chepurda studies day and night in Quebec and Ukraine to get her high school diploma and learn French.
A Ukrainian teenager determined to become a lawyer studies French by day in Quebec and distance learning by night to get his high school diploma in Ukraine… on top of his part-time job.
Sofia Chepurda has a busy schedule, to say the least.
On weekdays from 8am to 4pm she attends franking courses in Varennes on the south coast.
And from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m., she logs into her computer to continue her schooling in Ukraine, 7,000 km from her hometown.
“I really don’t sleep much… Sometimes I fall asleep in class,” admits the 16-year-old. But I’m really motivated.”
In total, she spends 65 hours in class every week. And she sleeps about three hours a night.
“It still sucks,” comments Sonia Benoit, who welcomed Sofia and her family when they arrived last September and continues to look after them.
The young Ukrainian bursts out laughing and nods. She understood the comment in French.
“My trick to staying up at night is to drink two cups of coffee and a glass of water. It’s funny, but it works,” she adds.
In the dark
The student studies in the dark with headphones on so as not to wake up her mother or her three-year-old little brother.
MARTIN ALARIE / MONTREAL JOURNAL
Liudmyla Chepurda, her son Arsen and her daughter Sofia love their life in Varennes, which reminds them a little of Chernihiv, from which they had to flee because of the war.
At the start of the school year in Ukraine, Sofia said she was scolded by her teachers because she kept failing at the end of the day.
Management was unaware that these were seven time zones of Chernihiv, which fell under Russian control early in the war before being recaptured.
“After that, they understood my situation,” said the teenager with the blonde curly hair, who arrived in August.
To add to her schedule as CEO, Sofia works 12-hour weekends at a local grocery store cutting up fruits and veggies so as not to burden her single mom.
Victim
“And she also does a lot of homework,” adds her friend Matvii Knysh, who immigrated from Ukraine three years ago.
Sofiia makes all these sacrifices hoping to get her Ukrainian diploma so she can get accepted into CEGEP and continue her studies in French to eventually become a lawyer.
So far, she has above-average grades both in her French classes and in Ukraine.
“Since childhood, I have taught Sofia to set goals and achieve them. I’m very proud of her,” says her mother, Liudmyla Chepurda.
Not quite decided yet
TOMA ICZKOVITS
Nataliia Koshkina with her two sons Hlib and Kiril, her husband Mykola Koshkin and their dog.
A Ukrainian mother is ambivalent about a stay in Montreal when peace finally settles in while a brand new home awaits her small family back home.
A week before the Russians invaded Ukraine, Nataliia Koshkina and her family were putting the finishing touches on the painting of their new home a few kilometers from Kharkiv.
Then the tanks appeared, the church that she could see from the window was destroyed by a rocket, and she decided to leave the country with her two sons.
“I still have the memory of the feelings of that day,” she says regretfully in the dining room of her small apartment a block from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce in Montreal.
As her move into that dream home fast approached, her departure was particularly heartbreaking.
“I’m sorry that I invested so much time and passion in this house and that we couldn’t live there for a single day,” sighs the mid-thirties.
She misses the cafés on every street corner, her circle of friends and her old garden and construction company. “I loved my life in Ukraine, I wouldn’t have changed anything there.”
Question mark
At the same time, Nataliia values every day she spends in Quebec, where her children are safe, where basic services work and where the Russians are too far away to reach them.
But while the trained accountant loves the Frenchization, she admits she sometimes struggles to project herself into the future.
After six months here, she still wonders every day if fleeing the country was the right thing to do.
“It wasn’t until I saw my son in his pajamas with presents and a happy face under the tree at Christmas that I thought it was a good idea.”
Far from the enemy
Her husband, who has just joined them, is more keen on the idea of settling permanently in Quebec, even if it means renting the house in Kharkiv.
“Of course we want a better life, better education for the children,” says Mykola Koshkin, who is currently doing a course in driving heavy trucks.
And in his opinion, it was better to move away from the enemy once and for all than to uproot yourself over and over again.
Does that mean they stay here?
“We’ll talk about it when the time comes,” Nataliia said, looking at her partner with a grin.
Today the whole family is quietly learning French, as evidenced by the books and manuals scattered around their home. A map of Canada hangs above the kitchen table.
Hlib, 10 years old, is gradually opening up and has discovered a love for skating.
As for Kiril, 14, the decision to stay in Quebec makes sense to him.
“I’m a rock musician and there are more opportunities here,” says the man, who is even part of a band called “Inodi” (“sometimes”, in Ukrainian).
At 44 a new life away from the bombs
Pierre-Paul Poulin / Le Journal de Montreal / QMI Agency
Tatyana Reutskaya welcomed us with traditional Ukrainian cakes at her pretty salon in LaSalle, Montreal.
A Ukrainian refugee, still wracked by the echoes of war, now lives a peaceful life in Montreal, which she hopes to share with her mother who stayed behind in Ukraine.
Immediately after waking up at 6 a.m. Montreal time, Tatyana Reutskaya hurries to call Kharkiv, where the bombs continue to fall.
“I can’t stop myself from calling my mother. I don’t know when her last day will be,” she said at the end of January.
Although Russian troops were driven out of the Kharkiv region over the summer, the threat still looms over the 700,000 people who still live in the metropolis; hence Tatyana’s desire to bring her 60-year-old mother to Quebec, who lives in her ancestors’ home despite the water and power outages.
Not like before
Reassured by the day’s news, Tatyana goes about her new pursuits in Quebec: intensive Frenchization at McGill University, a little embroidery or reading, and a few hours of housekeeping for a family.
“I have to earn money to send my mother something. And then my grandfather always told me that we have to work when we are young and healthy,” says the newcomer in perfectly acceptable French.
All her energy goes into building her new life, which she begins at the age of 44 full of optimism.
“I want my life in Canada to find a new direction. I like this country, I think the people are more open than in Ukraine,” she explains.
Nevertheless, her everyday life is in contrast to her life before, where she was active in the organization of major cultural events.
No more traveling and the little luxuries of everyday life. “I’m not satisfied with much,” she says simply in her living room in LaSalle, which has been tastefully furnished thanks to donations.
Memorable Memories
Arrived last May, Tatyana is thousands of kilometers away from Russian missiles and soldiers. But sometimes their memories catch up with them.
That summer he was simply unable to attend L’International des Feux Loto-Québec because of the explosion-like noise.
Her heart also started racing when she found herself panicking on a crowded platform at Berri-UQAM station.
“There were too many people, it reminded me of my evacuation. Women and children competed for places. I finally got on the train after 7 a.m., but I got away with a black eye and broken glasses,” she says.
Since then, Tatyana has consulted a volunteer Ukrainian psychologist online several times. “My situation is not unique and not serious,” she admits.
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