Whitehorse Daily Star

Yukon volunteers accompanied aid to Ukraine

Ed. note: the first part of this three-part series was published Friday, and the final part will appear Wednesday.

By Cassidy Bronson on August 7, 2023

Ed. note: the first part of this three-part series was published Friday, and the final part will appear Wednesday.

Donna Reimchen and Lesia Hnatiw left for Ukraine on June 15.

Reimchen returned to Whitehorse July 10.

Hnatiw returned to Edmonton July 7, where she attended the 50th anniversary of the Vegreville Ukrainian Pysanka Festival, then later returned home to Whitehorse on July 11.

The two separated in Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine.

“It was actually wonderful because it was kind of a smoother transition because I was surrounded by Ukrainian people and Ukrainian dancing, and it was like a big celebration of Ukrainian culture. So that was really nice,” Hnatiw said.

She went on to mention that their presence had a big impact on the Ukrainian people seeing that they came all the way from northern Canada to represent the UCAY and the people of the Yukon.

Hnatiw said it was emotional for the Ukrainians and for herself and Reimchen.

“When we went there, we were pretty determined, our organization (UCAY) is wanting to help in whatever way we can.

“And I think I came back with a sense of even more passion, I’ve been kind of really wanting to do something tangible like this, like going over to Ukraine and doing something on the ground, and it’s even made me more determined to help and to continue with our fundraising.”

“I guess the other impact that we had is just physically being there and showing people that we care, we haven’t forgotten about you, we’re doing you know what we can and we’re going to continue helping.

“And that was really important, I think, for this trip. I was really moved by just the connections with people and just how grateful they were. And it gives them, I think, hope.”

Hnatiw said we’re lucky here in the West, as people can pay attention to what they want.

Consequently, she said, it’s important for the UCAY to remind people that everyday in Ukraine, people are suffering the effects of war.

“It’s important for our organization (UCAY) to remind people that, every day in Ukraine people are having to live with this anxiety like the stress of the air raid sirens going off, and have this reality that they’re living with that we can’t even imagine, because we don’t know what it’s like to have to run for shelter or, never knowing what might happen.

“And so I think it’s important for us to remember that it’s still happening,” she said.

Reimchen also said it felt “really good” to come back home feeling more inspired than ever to continue fundraising efforts.

“When the full-scale war started last year, it really impacted me. I think this war is a very clear-cut case of good versus evil.

“Ukraine did not want this war, and we’ve all read stories and heard news reports on the layers of tragedies of what’s happening to people. It’s so wrong. It’s so heartbreaking,” she said.

“And I feel like areas that Russia occupied last year that got liberated, the stories that come out of the devastation, the torture, the murders, this stuff should not be happening.

“And I feel like having this chance to be part of our organization (UCAY) here and to go on this trip was a way to channel that energy into actually doing something.”

Reimchen said they ran their itinerary past a man from Edmonton who has made numerous trips into Ukraine.

She said they weren’t going anywhere close to where Russian artillery was.

“We heard the air raid sirens, the potential missile attacks, but you just kind of carry on because that’s what people do,” Reimchen added.

“We were there. We were focused, we had something to accomplish.

“So your mind, your energy is all going towards that and you maybe don’t have as much leftover to worry about what could happen.”

She also said while they stayed in Kyiv, they knew where the hotel bomb shelter was in case the sirens went off.

“If you have the precautions in place and you have contingency plans, like had a certain area become suddenly much more unsafe, we had plans of how we would leave or not go in the first place or so we went with the plan. We went where people were expecting us.”

Reimchen added that the trip was only possible because of the Yukoners who supported, helped, and donated toward it.

She said Hnatiw and herself were the visible ones who went but it was on behalf of the people here in Yukon.

“It was intense. It was difficult. It was amazing. It was an honour to be able to go. We met so many people who were kind and generous,” she noted.

“It was different, right? Because you go from reading about a situation on the news to being in the middle of it.

“Some of the intensity came from the fact that everybody we met there knows somebody who’s fighting in the frontlines.

“So the war touches everybody every day. And everybody there is living with that reality. I mean, day in, day out for almost a year and a half now.”

Reimchen said in some ways “it felt like living a lifetime” in the brief duration of their trip.

Hnatiw told the Star about an emotional moment shared with a hotel employee.

“One of the women that was working at our hotel, she gifted us with Ukrainian embroidered blouses, which were beautiful, and she made a point of coming back to the hotel when she wasn’t even on shift before we left to get them to us, and she was sharing her stories about family members.

“She has a nephew that is fighting on the front. And so that was really, you know, an emotional moment,” she noted.

When they first arrived in Ukraine, Reimchen said they were in Lviv and were hosted by the parents of newcomer Ukrainians in Whitehorse.

“They live in a village that’s outside of the city itself. Our first two days there we had this amazing hospitality. I mean, she cooked amazing food for us.

“They showed us around the city a little bit. And they also marshall, teams of volunteers at the train stations to help with all the luggage getting on and off the trains. That was an adventure,” she said.

Hnatiw said she saw the strength and resilience of Ukrainian people carrying on and living despite the ongoing war.

“People are living under these horrible circumstances, but they are still full of life and passion and I was really blown away by it; I can’t imagine.

“I’m a mom too, and so just seeing the children was really kind of hard for me, actually; it just made me really feel a lot of emotions. I was angry.

“These people are in the situation that they never asked for, and that it’s continuing and that you know, it’s sort of like I can’t imagine as a mum having to make certain decisions that a lot of families had to make.

“Families were torn apart, some mums and their children left Ukraine and had to leave their husbands. We just are so fortunate that we’ve never been in a situation where we’ve had to make those decisions.”

She said that people who have stayed, and the children who are growing up, will be a traumatized generation.

“It’s like a generation of traumatized children now that hear air raid alert sirens, and it’s like, they go into the bomb shelters, and have schools down in the bomb shelters and this awful twisted reality now that they are that’s been forced upon them,” she said.

Reimchen said she spent a day and a half with a group of volunteers in Chortkiv.

She said the volunteers go to visit their local soldiers who are now in rehabilitation facilities in western Ukraine.

“And their recollections of what those visits are like, that’s heartbreaking too, because you can just sort of read between the lines and for some of these soldiers,” she said.

“They’ve suffered devastating physical injuries and mental injuries. And I don’t know how they come out of it.

“And these volunteers, they told us when they started these visits, they didn’t know what to say to them either. Everyone’s learning how to navigate these situations that no human should have to.”

She said she asked people on the ground what kind of messages they would want to tell people, and Yukoners back home (Whitehorse).

“Some of the sentiments that people echoed from each other is that people are determined to resist. There’s no appetite at all to negotiate anything to achieve some sort of pretend peace,” she said

“Because they know that as long as part of Ukraine is occupied, no one’s going to be safe. It’ll just happen again.

“People want our Yukoners here to know that they’re still suffering every day. It’s still very, very real,” she said.

Reimchen said it was very interesting to her that conversation between Ukrainians on the ground could go from profound heartbreak to talking about cats, plants, gardens, etc.

Hnatiw and Reimchen recalled a heartbreaking encounter with locals.

“We were sitting at an outdoor café. And like with the hospital director and the medical director of the hospital in Yuzhnoukrainsk and there was a table a little ways away from us, and I think they must have overheard us speaking and they deduced what we were doing there and they came over and gave us ice cream and a little glass of wine,” Hnatiw said.

“And it was a grandma and her daughter. And then the grandmother showed us a photo of her grandsons, two of them.

“They’re twins, and they were fighting in Azovstal, and it was like the metal factory in Mariupol where they were holding off the Russians for quite a long time.

“It was in the news. Like it was a fierce awful battle and they took a lot of them as prisoners and it’s an ongoing thing because a lot of them are missing.”

Hnatiw told the Star that there was a third woman, but she was unclear of the relationship.

“And so her two twin grandsons had been missing for over a year. And so it was just this moment of sheer grief.

“That she doesn’t know the whereabouts of her grandsons and she’s thanking us for being there. It was just, it was like, you don’t know what to say.

“You know that she’s giving us something like a gift and it was just really humbling. I don’t know the word to say, but just how strong, and I can’t imagine what that would be like to not know where your family is, to never know if you’ll ever see them and to be put in this situation where Ukraine never wanted this,” she continued.

Reimchen said on the surface, you have three women out enjoying a nice sunny summer day.

“But right underneath that surface level is this profound grief and anguish. And in various variations of that kind of story is what we’ve heard all over the place,” she said.

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