ATHABASCA — War is hell, they say, but that’s not entirely true because innocent people don’t go to hell.
For local woman Iryna Kennedy she sits safely in Canada, like 1,359,655 other Ukrainian-Canadians, but while she is physically in Athabasca, her heart and mind are in Ukraine with her friends and family, with the neighbours, business people, teachers, labourers and more, who suddenly came under attack from Russian forces when bombs started falling Feb. 24.
“I was 28 years old when I left Ukraine and my house behind, my family and friends, high school friends, my university friends, my co-workers,” Kennedy said in a March 11 interview. “I have all my cousins, my uncles and my mom's family. Luckily, they are in the western part of Ukraine right now; it’s somewhat safe, for now. There's no place safe in Ukraine anymore.”
Kennedy came to Canada in 2010, 13 years after her father returned from an exchange program and told her how wonderful Canada is.
“My dad used to work here in the Stollery hospital as a doctor. He was selected as one of the five doctors in the entire country, the entire Ukraine, to come and do exchanges,” she said. “He came back home, he just told me that, ‘This is the country you want to move to one day.’”
Kennedy’s father has since passed away, but in 2020 she was able to bring her mother over on a visa, so she has family with her here while they worry together about the family left behind.
“We have family with little kids. I have a cousin that has a wee four-month-old and they have to stay in the basements of different stores,” she said. “Some of them hide in the churches, in the basements there. They have air raid sirens a few times a night. It doesn't matter if you don't sleep, you just get up and run downstairs to hide. We have a lot of people from eastern Ukraine right now that had to leave their houses with not much, pretty much just a bag.”
And as they run for shelter, they are deciding to stay, to fight for their homeland, or run for safety to another country, but the cost is high, as most leave behind mothers, brothers, spouses, and adult children who want to stay and fight.
“It is a very difficult decision to leave everything you have there. It's your home, you have to leave your husband behind, you have to leave the father of your kids, you have to leave your own father or mom or whoever they have,” said Kennedy. "There's no right or wrong decision at this point. This is just self-preservation I guess, instinct where you need to try to save your kids.”
Every morning she is on the phone with relatives hearing what they've endured during the night and every evening she gives them updates from western news sources before they try to get some sleep.
“I wake up and then exchange the information, what's happening and stuff and then the other way around,” she said. "It's just been the last 16 days (as of March 11) of a nightmare. Life is upside down completely. The worst is yet to come, unfortunately.”
She is proud of her fellow countrymen and women who are fighting the invaders and shakes her head in embarrassment at the stories she is hearing of the Russian soldiers.
“They get lost in terms of navigation, they absolutely have zero clue where they are,” she said. “I was talking to my friend actually this morning and she said that (Russian soldiers) were just in one of the suburbs of Kyiv and they destroyed a very rich area, and then they were asking people how far it is from there to Kyiv. They had no clue that they were 15 kilometres from it.”
Humanitarian aid
Locally, Boyle School held a fundraiser over the last few weeks, gathering donations from friends, family, and businesses and by Mar. 14 had amassed $6,380.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of St. Peter and St. Paul – Athabasca also issued a statement and a list of places to send money.
“The people of Ukraine are suffering unspeakable abuses of an unprovoked, irrational, and hostile war, which propagates pain and death,” the church said in the statement. “It has been asked if it has affected anyone we know (and) the answer is YES. In the town and county of Athabasca there are many families who are Canadian by birth, by citizenship or by permanent resident but all of them are Ukrainian by heritage, new and old. They are proud to be Canadian but some of their hearts are in their homeland of Ukraine.”
The church is collecting donations and will issue tax receipts for anything over $20 and listed three ways to donate.
By cheque or money order payable to ‘Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Sts. Peter & Paul – Athabasca' and mail to: Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Sts. Peter & Paul – Athabasca, 4302-50 Ave. Athabasca, AB, T9S 1P6.
Or donate directly to the Bishop’s Orphanage Fund. Locum Tenens of the Metropolitan Cathedral, his Grace, Bishop Illarion of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada, who has visited Athabasca several times for services and visitations, personally taking monetary donations to several orphanages in Ukraine.
Cheques or money orders can be made out to the 'Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada Western Eparchy’ and note it is for the ‘Orphanage Fund.’ You can mail it to the same address above. Or to donate online, go to www.cufoundation.ca, the Canada-Ukraine Foundation.
Donations may also be made through the Red Cross at http://www.donate.RedCross.ca; the Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund at www.globalgiving.org; or Unicef Canada at secure.unicef.ca/ukraine
