‘It was hard:’ Moose Jaw’s newest locals share their experience of leaving Ukraine

By Katherine Ludwig

A young Ukrainian couple has just begun to settle in Moose Jaw.

Eduard and Valerie are temporarily staying with local residents while they look for local work and housing. Both of them are from Kyiv.

Eduard is 23 years old and Valerie is 22; they’ve been together for three years.

Eduard has a degree in agriculture and is currently studying for two master degrees in agriculture and agronomy. He may have a work opportunity at Simpson Seeds. Valerie has a degree in marketing and promotions and is looking for work in that industry.

Eduard moved to the capital after his hometown Donetsk was annexed by Russia in 2014.

“We have a bad neighbour, an aggressive neighbour who cannot fight with China because China is too big to them so they try to find somebody small and attack them,” says Eduard.

When the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in March, Eduard was moving back and forth from Hungary and Slovakia doing a work term for his university program and Valerie was with her family in Kyiv.

Valerie shared a story of how a missile woke her up at 4 o’clock in the morning when it fell close to her family home. She said at that moment, she and her family knew the war had started.

They decided to stay in Kyiv, waiting for a few days to avoid the traffic jams and they waited in the hopes that it would possibly end quickly but it didn’t. The war continues more than a month later.

When Valerie and her family decided it was time to leave Kyiv, they travelled by train to Ternopil.

Her family searched for more than two days for a place to rent in Ternopil. After they found a place, Valerie stayed there for almost two weeks while her family stayed there for a month before travelling to Vienna. That’s where Valerie’s family is currently staying.

“For me it was hard to leave my house because I lived there for about 22 years. For me it was hard and I don’t really know how hard it would have been for my friends, mother, grandfather and (grand)mother because they can’t understand what to do because it’s their home and we were scared about our flat because a ballistic rocket can destroy our area,” says Valerie.

From Ternopil, Valerie packed her luggage and grabbed Eduard’s luggage, and travelled to the border with Hungary.

Eduard picked her up at the border and they went to Slovakia, where they started planning their trip to Canada.

Eduard had plans to move to Saskatchewan before he met Valerie.

“I just love this province and the prices here (in Moose Jaw) are a little bit lower than in any big city. I love the people of Saskatchewan. They are very friendly and I know there are a lot of Ukrainians here and people (here) just want to help,” says Eduard.

He said Valerie took some convincing to move here but they made the decision based on the fact that the cost of living is much lower in Canada compared to Europe.

From Slovakia, they took a plane to France and from there they flew to Canada.

They said they would have liked to leave for Canada sooner than they did but it took a month for them to receive their travel visas.

They decided to come to Moose Jaw because they were able to find temporary housing here and they knew it would be easier to get on their feet in a small city rather than in a larger one.

Eduard and Valerie are currently in the process of getting all of their official documentation so that they can find housing and work.