Lesia Korobaylo’s father came to Canada in 1948, part of an exodus of Ukrainian immigrants from the devastation of world war and the oppression of Soviet rule. He never saw his mother again. His teenaged sister disappeared after being led into the woods by Red Army troops. He didn’t return to visit his homeland till 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the dawn of Ukraine’s independence.
Now, with history repeating itself, Ms. Korobaylo is fielding calls and texts from family members in Ukraine who want to escape, like her father, to the safety of Canada. “They are asking, they are begging,” says Ms. Korobaylo, who is retired and volunteers at the Ukrainian Museum of Canada in Toronto. Could they work if they came here, they ask? Where would they stay? She says that she, for one, would be happy to take them in. “Imagine being ripped away from everything you possess,” she says, fighting back tears.
As the Russian assault intensifies, Western countries are bracing for a flood of refugees. The United Nations says that a million have already left Ukraine and the number could rise to four million or even more.
Canada would be one of their main landing spots. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, this country has the world’s third largest Ukrainian population, trailing only Russia and Ukraine itself. More than 1.3 million people claim Ukrainian heritage.
Ukrainians have come to Canada in successive waves. In the first, between 1891 and 1914, they settled en masse on the prairies, lured by offers of rich farmland. In the second, between the First and Second World Wars, about 70,000 arrived. In the third, the one that brought Ms. Korobaylo’s father, they came from displaced persons camps in Europe or fled the lowering Iron Curtain. A fourth wave came in late-Soviet and post-Soviet times. In the 15 years after 2001, says the Encyclopedia, this country took in 40,000 permanent residents from Ukraine.
Much as they often suffered in the journey and struggled once they got here, most embraced their new country, becoming farmers, labourers, scientists, lawyers, teachers, doctors. As Ms. Korobaylo puts it, “The opportunity was given to them and they didn’t waste it.”
Now a fifth wave seems likely to wash up on our shores. Canada is well-equipped to absorb it. This country took in thousands of refugees when the Soviet Union crushed the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and then the Prague Spring of 1968. It took in more when the boat people fled Communist Vietnam and still more when Syrians fled their devastated country.
Ottawa says it is fast-tracking approvals for Ukrainians who want to come here. Ukrainian churches, schools and charities are rallying to help them. Donations for refugees are flooding in. Toronto, where many would first arrive, has a big and vibrant Ukrainian-Canadian community, numbering about 144,000 as of the 2016 census. The passions of left and right that once divided it into hostile camps have faded with time.
Everyone feels the same horror, the same anger, the same pride in their cousins in Kyiv and Kharkiv and Odesa. “It’s absolutely devastating to see a country being obliterated,” says Ms. Korobaylo, taking a break from smoothing traditional embroidered shirts with a steamer for an exhibit that is about to open in the small museum on Spadina Avenue. When a woman walks by and greets her with the salutation that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has made famous, “Slava Ukraini” (Glory to Ukraine), she responds: “Heroiam slava” (Glory to our heroes).
The refugees, should they arrive, would enrich this country, as the Hungarians and the Vietnamese and so many other waves of grateful people fleeing war and tyranny have done through the generations. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Let’s hope that this vicious conflict will somehow come to an end; that the frightened throngs that have already fled for their lives will be able to return soon to their homes; that Ukraine won’t spend decades under Moscow’s boot again; that no one will suffer what Ms. Korobaylo’s father did and stay cut off from homeland and family year after year.
But if they do come, Canada and its deeply rooted Ukrainian community will be ready. Of that, at least, Ms. Korobaylo is certain.
Our Morning Update and Evening Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the day’s most important headlines. Sign up today.
Marcus Gee