Altona concert in support of Ukraine, friendship

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/03/2022 (1083 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As his long-time Ukrainian friend guards a bridge in his village near Lviv, Callum Morrison will try to help from southern Manitoba.

“I’m not ethnically Ukrainian… but for one, I’m human and I have a pen pal from Ukraine and I went and visited him in 2019. I saw Ukrainian cities, loved the place,” said Morrison, who moved to Altona from Scotland in 2017.

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine passes its third week, the 26-year-old University of Manitoba agriculture graduate student and a cappella singer will host a fundraising concert Friday night at Seeds of Life Community Church.

Plans for the event grew quickly in the largely Mennonite community, where much of the population’s ancestors emigrated from what is now Ukraine.

“You think of Manitoba, 90 per cent of the sunflowers in Canada are produced here. The sunflower is (Ukraine’s) national flower… It is an Indigenous plant to North America, but the first commercial sunflower plants were actually brought from Eastern Europe in the area that is now Ukraine,” Morrison said.

“(Altona’s) symbol is the sunflower, our flag is the sunflower — it’s blue and yellow. There is definitely this strong connection as well here.”

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress will speak at the event, as will delegates from each level of government, while local musicians perform, and artists and businesses run a silent auction of their wares to raise money for the Mennonite Central Committee’s Ukraine emergency response.

“Sometimes, words fail us and I think art and music can break through some of those barriers,” Morrison said.

He will lead the concert in a rendition of the Ukrainian national anthem — in English, so everyone can understand.

“The words are so powerful… There’s a few translations out there, but it’s basically, ‘Ukraine has not yet died, nor her glory, nor her freedom’ — it perfectly encapsulates what’s going on now,” he said Thursday.

His friend in Ukraine, 24-year-old Anton Sachko, recorded a video address for the concert, to speak to the reality on the ground as the war rages and the need for humanitarian aid.

“He’s gone through some bad things over the years, he was beaten by pro-Russian separatists and Russian soldiers when he was young,” Morrison said of Sachko, who grew up in the eastern region of Donbas near Russia, before moving to Lviv in the west.

Then the invasion began Feb. 24.

“Everyone there’s having to do something for the effort, whatever it is. Many of these people in Ukraine are just like you and me, they using whatever they have and whatever tools they have,” Morrison said.

So he, and the Altona community, will do something for the effort Friday night.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca