This province aims to embrace a wave of people fleeing Ukraine — and not for the first time

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This article was published 13/03/2022 (1021 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In small-town Saskatchewan, historic Ukrainian churches are as ubiquitous as grain elevators. In some spots, the links to the European country go well beyond a house of worship — visitors to Canora are greeted by a 25-foot-tall statue of a Ukrainian woman named Lesia, who welcomes them with an offering of kolach: bread and salt, a traditional Slavic symbol of hospitality.

While all of the Prairie provinces have a long history of Ukrainian settlement, perhaps no other province so closely ties its history and identity to Ukraine. It’s why Saskatchewan’s government is now pledging to become the No. 1 destination in Canada for Ukrainians fleeing their country.

The province has for years been working to attract more immigrants, but the hope now is that its already-significant Ukrainian population (more than 13 per cent of residents identify as Ukrainian) will help reduce culture shock for new arrivals. The province has committed $335,000 to help displaced Ukrainian families resettle in Saskatchewan and is working with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress of Saskatchewan to set up co-ordinators to help individuals and groups find accommodations, language training and employment services.

The province’s Immigration Minister Jeremy Harrison said he’s been in touch with his federal counterpart and expressed an “open-ended commitment” to accepting and resettling Ukrainian refugees.

The seeds of Ukrainian settlement in Saskatchewan were planted early in the province’s history. Between 1891 and 1941, more than 170,000 Ukrainians came to Canada, with the bulk setting in the prairies. Many were enticed by offers of free land: 160-acre homesteads to start a new life.

There would be successive waves after each world war, including more labourers, but also political refugees and professionals. Saskatchewan continued to be a destination for Ukrainians when the country declared independence in 1991 and after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014.

In his 1959 book “Sons of the Soil,” Illia Kiriak writes about the hardships faced by the first wave of Ukrainian settlers, who were mostly peasant farmers, but also of their triumphs; they found the farming conditions of the prairies were remarkably similar to those in the steppe, in climate and geography and right down to the soil.

In particular, black soil, known as chernozem soil — from the Russian words chernyi (black) and zemlya (soil) — is abundant in both places. It’s said to be among the most fertile soils in the world.

“Chernozem forms under grassland conditions, (including) grasslands in Ukraine and western Canada. So they were suited by virtue of climate and the soils to do production of cereal grains,” explains Gerald Luciuk, an agrologist and member of the Saskatchewan-Ukraine Relations Advisory Committee. His grandparents came from Ukraine in the late 1800s and early 1900s; he grew up attending Ukrainian church and speaking the language.

Today, many Saskatchewanians still speak Ukrainian as their first language, Harrison said, including in his constituency of Meadow Lake.

“You still have street signs in a lot of communities that are in Ukrainian here in Saskatchewan. You’ve got religious institutions that would be exactly the same as that you would find in Ukraine. Even the geography — there are lots of folks who have come from Ukraine to Saskatchewan and say, ‘Geez, this looks exactly like home.’”

It’s a feeling Iryna Matsiuk, an immigration consultant in Saskatoon, understands well. She said when she first came to Saskatchewan, she was amazed at how strong Ukrainian culture was there.

She remembers being taken to a children’s dance competition in Prince Albert and seeing people wearing the vyshyvanka, the traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirt.

“It almost like shocked me, in a positive way, when I came here, in 2005,” Matsiuk said. “My business purpose at the time was to showcase how Ukrainian Saskatchewan actually is. And I was in awe, because for the whole day, kids who were not visibly Ukrainian, or didn’t have Ukrainian last names, everyone was kind of united with this Ukrainian culture … and so proud.”

That was different from when she grew up as a young girl in the Soviet Union, where traditional culture of the individual republics was often repressed.

“For me, I grew up in Soviet Ukraine … but we were not very Ukrainian. So Ukrainian dance was not seen as a cool activity to do. So for me it was like, ‘Wow, this is really something.’”

Matsiuk now works to help other Ukrainians settle in Saskatchewan, and said there’s been a steady trickle in recent years. As co-chair of a Ukraine crisis response committee, she’s working with the government and other partners to facilitate more support for Ukrainians who arrive.

She said those arriving now are not technically refugees, according to Canada’s definition of refugees, because they’re not government-sponsored. “We are preparing for arrivals of displaced people … So they will need a little bit more support than maybe some others,” Matsiuk said.

She said it’s expected people will be supported by local community groups or family or friends to get accommodations and work or student permits. The longer the war drags on, the more likely new arrivals will seek citizenship or permanent residency — but Matsiuk said there are still a lot of unknowns.

“The government may step in and say we are going to provide a little bit more in terms of maybe some kind of health coverage, but right now, we don’t even know if the kids will be able to go to school here for free,” she said.

But she’s confident if there’s anywhere in Canada that will welcome Ukrainians warmly, it’s where she lives.

“I would say if there’s a place to be outside of Ukraine (for Ukrainians) it’s definitely Canada, and I’m very biased, but I would say Saskatchewan.”

Omar Mosleh is an Edmonton-based reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @OmarMosleh