Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the community of Prince George has welcomed refugees with arms wide open.
Organizations like Share Hope and Prince George for Ukraine, as well as supportive local businesses and individuals, have been working tirelessly to help settle as many Ukrainians in the Northern Capital as possible.
“We have just over 120 people who are in Prince George right now,” said Dick Mynen, a volunteer with Prince George for Ukraine.
He said 15 more are expected to arrive before the end of November, and 27 more before Christmas, adding to the 43 families currently living in Prince George.
“The numbers are going up,” he said. “We think we are going to hit 200 before we know it.”
Mynen, and others involved in the group, said they never expected their local operation to grow this large when they started working early this year at the beginning of the war.
These numbers were one of many topics discussed at a Prince George for Ukraine meeting held yesterday (Friday) at St George’s Ukrainian Catholic Church.
One of the people at the meeting was 39 year old Oleksii (Alex) Miroshnyk, who arrived in Canada from Ukraine in late May with his wife and three daughters.
Before the war, Miroshnyk was living in Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine with a population of 2.5 million – located in the North Eastern side of the country near the Russian border.
In Ukraine, he worked in sales, customer support, and e-commerce. This summer in Canada, he was mowing lawns.
He has since taken a job with the Prince George Citizen as a Multimedia Marketing Executive.
So far, he says his experience in Canada has been “quite positive, but simultaneously, everything is very different. I cannot say it is good, it is bad, no. It is a very interesting, unexpected experience.”
“A lot of doors were open here,” he said. “I used to live with a picture that America is the first country for immigrants. All metaphorical doors to America were closed.”
Before coming to Canada, Miroshnyk, his wife, and his three children were all staying in one bedroom in a house in Bulgaria with his parents, his sister, and her two kids.
“We could not keep going like that,” he said, and the more he looked into coming to Canada, the more doors legally opened.
Six months into living in Prince George, Miroshnyk said his family is adjusting nicely.
His daughters go to school at D.P. Todd and Saint Mary’s, and he has been very happy with the quality of education at both. His wife is now the head of a local janitorial team.
The Prince George community has been incredibly charitable to the Miroshnyk family, and the other families that have come and continue to come to Northern BC.
Charles Scott, one of the leaders of PG for Ukraine, talked at length about some of the donations they have received – everything from furniture to full homes to hundreds of thousands of dollars given anonymously.
One recent example was a full, heated warehouse donated by KMS Tools where furniture for refugee families is being stored, for free.
Scott also pointed at “the generosity of people who are giving cribs, and desks, and beds, a whole range of things that people need to set up a household.”
He said trucking companies have footed $15,000 – $20,000 bills to help train Ukrainian drivers, and other companies in industries where language and communication are not as important have specifically sought out refugees to hire.
People in the community have also opened their homes for months at a time to Ukrainian families arriving at the airport with nowhere else to go.
Scott added that “from a reality point of view, you can only sustain that effort for so long, so we do need additional people who might consider being a host family, because there are host families that have been at it now for nine months.”
The biggest need for Ukrainian families – many of whom are single mothers whose husbands had to stay behind and fight the war – is childcare.
According to Dick Mynen, St George’s is working on developing a daycare to address this need.
“We are working with the licensing board and contractors to make the required renovations here,” he said. “If we can come up with a daycare solution, all of Prince George would benefit.”
Right now, Miroshnyk is not sure what his family will do once the war is over.
“Habit has a very huge influence on us,” he said. “I really realized it only when I came here. It is like traffic in two directions; I used to live in Ukraine and our culture and society and so on, but as the days go by we get used to living in Canada as well.”
One of the biggest factors for him is his family.
“We miss our parents. We will see if they come here, and we will be able to reunite.”
“We have a lot to worry about,” he said, still thinking of his family.
His closest relations have all resettled in Bulgaria, but “I still have a lot of aunts, cousins who moved to the Western part of Ukraine and live close to the Poland border.”
The extended Miroshnyk family has been able to keep in contact through a Facebook group chat, where updates and pictures are shared regularly.
Anyone looking to help, or become involved in PG for Ukraine can click here for more information.
One of the biggest needs they say they are facing right now is finding housing for a family of seven, with five kids, who are on their way and will arrive on December ninth.