Dozens of Ukrainian refugees head to Newfoundland, ready to call the Rock home

Olga Antoniuk knows nothing about Newfoundland and Labrador, but she is eager to get there and put the war in Ukraine behind her.

Ms. Antoniuk and her husband, Ivan, along with their cats, Bella and Simba, were among the 168 Ukrainian refugees in Poland. who took a charter flight to St. John’s on Monday from Katowice, which is south of Warsaw.

The couple is from Chernivtsi in western Ukraine, and since the Russian invasion began on February 24, Ms Antoniuk has been consumed with worry and looking for a way out. She used to run a real estate company, but that ended when fighting broke out, and now she and her husband, who was exempt from Ukraine’s ban on adult men leaving because he too has Romanian citizenship, hope to find work and start a family in Newfoundland. They are both 30 years old and having a child in the Ukraine seemed inconceivable to him.

“We dream of a child, but we can’t do it right now in Ukraine. I have, every day, stress. Big stress. And it’s not normal. You think only of this war,” Antoniuk said as he waited at an airport hotel Monday morning for the bus to the terminal. “I think in Canada we can start a new life, a really new life.”

The charter flight represented the culmination of weeks of work by a team of provincial officials who have been in Warsaw since late March introducing Newfoundland to refugees. “We have met Ukrainians on the streets, we have been visiting some shelters, we built some relationships with various organizations in the city of Warsaw and outside of it, and we also put a big emphasis on social media,” Sonia said. Parker, a provincial immigration officer who was born in Poland. “We didn’t know how it was going to end. But here we are, the plane is quite full.”

Where are the Ukrainian refugees going?

The Canadian government has introduced a special visa program that will allow Ukrainian refugees to stay in the country for up to three years. Newfoundland has been keen to encourage as many as possible to settle on the rock.

After arriving in St. John’s, the refugees will be housed in hotels for two weeks while volunteers and aid agencies help them find jobs, permanent housing and schools for their children. More refugees could soon arrive; the team has a long list of people eager to make the next flight.

Many of the Ukrainians who flew on Monday already had big plans for their future in Newfoundland.

Serhii Firsikov, 30, wants to open a barbershop and hopes that moving to Canada will also encourage his parents to leave Ukraine and join him. Mr. Firsikov was in Poland when the war started. He stayed in Warsaw with his wife and volunteered with a humanitarian organization.

He is worried about his parents, who live near Irpin, the scene of some of the worst fighting. “At 5 am on February 24, my mom called me and told me that the war had started. You cannot be preparing for such information,” he said Monday as he waited for the airport bus. “Every day I’m afraid they won’t call.”

The flight to Canada was also something of a dream come true for Mr. Firsikov. “When I was 10 years old, my mom asked me, ‘What do you want?’” he recalled. “And I said, I want to live in Toronto.” He is now sold in Newfoundland due to the passion he has developed for whales and peaceful living. “We realized that we wanted some kind of family town. That’s why we decided to go to Newfoundland. We are super grateful for this.”

Mahmoud Atris, 25, plans to finish his medical studies in Newfoundland and become a surgeon. He was about to graduate from a university in kyiv when Russian missiles began raining down around his home in nearby Zhytomyr. “I could see all the shelling from my window. The Russians were at the end of the street.

She found the Newfoundland program online a few weeks ago and couldn’t wait to apply. He wanted to get on the plane so much that he was one of the first refugees waiting for the bus at the airport hotel.

“I’m so nervous actually,” he said. “It never crossed my mind that I would go to Canada. I look forward to giving back and being grateful for this opportunity that has been given to me.”

Iryna Zozulia, 27, has already been offered a customer service job at a Canadian aviation company. She is from Lviv, in western Ukraine, and she laughed when she was asked what she knew about Newfoundland. After a quick search online, she concluded; “It’s nice. The photos are nice.” Then her friend chimed in with a smile, “Winter is long.”

For Marina Chernova, Newfoundland represented an opportunity to get her six-year-old son, Damyr, to safety. She is also from Chernivtsi and felt that the city was becoming too dangerous. She had done some research on the province. “We see that Newfoundland has a very beautiful nature and I read that there are very kind and good people there,” she said.

Not everyone plans to stay in Newfoundland or Canada long term.

Serhii Semenets, 16, was driving alone to St. John’s on Monday. Unlike many of the others, Mr. Semenets has inside information knowledge of the province. Her sister lived in Newfoundland for four years while studying and, although she now works in Britain, she will return to St. John’s with her husband, who is a maths teacher. In the meantime, Mr. Semenets will be living with one of his friends.

On Monday, while sitting in the lobby of the airport hotel with his mother, who had accompanied him on the trip to Katowice from her home in Zhytomyr to say goodbye, Mr. Semenets spoke about his future. He wants to study political science and then become a politician. “When I finish studying, I will go to Ukraine,” he said. “I want to live in Ukraine and make my city comfortable for life.”

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