Leaving your home and bringing your children to a new country where you don’t speak the language while your husband stays behind is difficult and painful. But Mariana Kateryniak and her sister-in-law Oksana Kateryniak and their four children get by with a little help from their friends at St. Thomas the Apostle in Ottawa.

It all started with a St. Thomas parishioner talking with her Polish neighbours, who had assisted several families and individuals to come to Canada from Ukraine. “They reached out for some financial help and support, so we were doing that, and then they contacted us to see if we could actually sponsor these families,” Cathy Munroe, a parishioner and warden at St. Thomas, told Crosstalk.

St. Thomas said yes. Munroe, Sara Jordan, and Maureen Tracy (who is not a parishioner but a long-time friend who frequently volunteers for activities) formed a core planning team and then reached out to the church and other volunteers for help.

Munroe says this was a new situation for St. Thomas parishioners, who had helped sponsor refugees before. Ukrainians are considered displaced people, not refugees. The federal government created a special program for Ukrainians, the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) that allows displaced persons from Ukraine to come to live and work in Canada for three years.

One of the major differences, she explained, is that sponsors of refugees must raise a certain amount of money before the people being sponsored can come. The Ukrainians could come as soon as they had their documents ready, they had a way to get to Canada and arrangements for someplace to stay.

The St. Thomas group provided five flights with donated Aeroplan points and purchased the last one. They had raised about $24,000 so far.

Accommodations came as a godsend online when people offered donations and other necessities for Ukrainians coming to Canada. Cate Soroczan offered free accommodations for all six of the family members in her Old Ottawa South home for nine months. “She is wonderful and a key part of our success to date,” says Munroe.

One challenge was that the house only had one bathroom for seven people, but two volunteers, Serge Choquette and David Tracy, converted a large closet into a bathroom.. St. Thomas set up a table at the community farmers’ market that takes place on the church property on Saturdays (except during the winter). One couple from the church made little blue and yellow ribbon pins that they gave to everyone who put their name on a list to help or donate to the families. Donna Hicks, formerly the CEO of Habitat for Humanity for the NCR connected the St. Thomas group with Cundell Plumbing and Heating and Enertron Electric who provided free plumbing and electrical work.

Christine Habrowych and Myron Momryk, a couple with Ukrainian background who live in the neighbourhood, also provided a valuable gift when they offered to translate. Myron was with the St. Thomas group to meet one of the families when they arrived at the airport in Montreal. They also attend the same Ukrainian church.

The adage that it takes a village to raise a child (and help an uprooted family settle in a new place) is lived out as a big team of volunteers helped get the children enrolled in school, take nine-year old Davyd to soccer practice and help their mothers get to appointments and navigate their way through government and health care systems as well as preparing their resumes.

The three priorities now are helping the women find jobs, housing for after May 1 and fundraising, Munroe said.

They hope to find a new housing situation where their two families live together or close together, so they can help each other with child-care.

Munroe said their group would greatly appreciate help from volunteers with fundraising skills and experience as that is a looming challenge. Providing for six people since July has used up much of the initial funds raised, ““We’re trying to figure out what the biggest bang for the effort that we can do. My hope is that if they are moving out in May, I’d really like to get the first $20,000 fast so I can say to them, “Don’t worry.”

The families have developed good friendships with St. Thomas volunteers. “We’re dealing with them on a daily basis. Honestly, they are like my extended family,” Munroe said. “I was so behind, the kids came over and decorated my Christmas tree for me.  I feel like I have two more daughters and more grandchildren. They are very close to a group at the church who have been working hard with them.”

Donations to the voluntary effort at St. Thomas may be received three ways: by cheque to St. Thomas the Apostle Anglican Church; via Canada Helps; by etransfer to stthomasenv@outlook.com.

PHOTO: CONTRIBUTED

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Unfortunately, the office has been asked by the federal department of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to pause submitting new applications while the department reduces a backlog of more than 70,000 applications that built up while the department dealt with staff shortages during the pandemic. Ghose says they have been asked to submit quarantine plans for two families, however, so she hopes things will start moving again.

“The only place where I would say there is a lot of action is with the Afghan program,” Ghose said. Under a program named Operation Afghan Safety (OAS), the department is reserving 3,000 spaces for Afghan citizens in particular categories—human rights defenders, journalists, LGBTI, persecuted religious minorities—who have managed to get out of the country and are eligible for private sponsorship. IRCC has given all the Sponsorship Agreement Holders like the Diocese of Ottawa 10 spaces each in this pool. Ghose says they could use the spaces right away if there are people who would be eligible.

There is no shortage of people who call and write to the office with inquiries about sponsoring their family members, but Ghose says that many of those people may be new to Canada themselves and may not have the financial resources to sponsor their family members, even if they meet the OAS criteria.

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Fady Milan, his wife Amina Awed, sons Joseph and Janpier, and nephew Salim Awed arrived in late November and early December. Their application for immigration to Canada dates back to early 2019, but pandemic travel restrictions kept them in limbo in Beirut, Lebanon, for almost three years. They did not all arrive together because Fady, Amina and Janpier were considered one family, while Joseph, who was over 21 years old at the time of application, needed a separate application. Similarly, their nephew Salim was not considered part of the family, so we had to file three separate applications— a mountain of paperwork.

After the long wait, the Milans are incredibly thankful to finally have made it to Canada. One of the forces driving them and the families we sponsored previously to flee Syria was that they had sons of military age and under no circumstance wanted to lose their young men in the Syrian civil war.

Fady and Amina Milan are in their early fifties, the boys in their twenties, and all are very eager to find work and build a life of their own. Fady is skilled in working with drywall and has an artistic bent and interest in interior design. Joseph studied hostelry, for which he is very suited with his outgoing personality. Salim worked in Beirut for a few years as an assistant to a jeweller and goldsmith and is looking for a job so that he can support his mother and siblings still in Syria. He would like to enrol in HVAC training at Algonquin College. The family have found some part-time contract painting and interior decorating work but are looking for more stable jobs.

With the help of a translator, Joseph Milan told Crosstalk, “I can’t tell you how happy and relieved I am to be here,” he said. He hopes to one day have his own business.

Joseph is already comfortable with Canadian winter and hopes to visit the North someday, but he said others in the family have found the cold temperatures difficult.

The sponsors’ story

Sponsorship started for us when a minister of the “Church of the Christian Community” somewhere in the U.S. circulated a letter trying to find somebody who would sponsor her cousins, two families. I felt bad about the fact that she had virtually no response and spontaneously offered to sponsor one of the families. The Armenian community in Montreal ended up sponsoring both of those families, but the minister got back to me saying she had one more cousin, Esteban Odabashian, with a family who wanted to come to Canada. 

In 2017, we had just organized a group called “Richmond Village Refugee Welcome,” (RVRW) and I joined as treasurer to help with the effort. I suggested sponsoring the Odabashian family, but one member of the RVRW executive vetoed the idea when found out they were Orthodox Christians. My wife and are retired and have more income than we would spend on ourselves. and we are both of an age where the future may be measured in—if we are blessed—a few years, not decades, so I decided to do the sponsorship myself via a “Group of Five” sponsorship.  Sponsorship has been an enriching experience, and we are glad we did it.

The family that I sponsored, the Odabashians, arrived before the Muslim family that the RVRW sponsored. Maritsa Odabashian was fluent in English and helped us a lot with translating. They lived for about four years in the rectory of the Anglican church at very favourable terms, until they bought a house of their own in Barrhaven. The Odabashians are doing extremely well, with four adults working at full time jobs and son Roupen holding an internship at the Ottawa Hospital. 

The second family that the Richmond community sponsored, with help of a Sponsorship Agreement Holder (SAH) and RVRW, were the Jneids, who are now settled and well-integrated in the community. One of their sons has recently been accepted into a university science program. 

Salma Awed, the mother in the Odabashian family, wished to bring her sister and family over, so we ended up sponsoring the Milan family with the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa as the Sponsorship Agreement Holder.

Generous support from the Anglican church community, the Village of Richmond and many friends made the sponsorship possible.  Presently, the Milans live in a rented townhouse in Barrhaven, well-furnished mostly by one member of RVRW who needed to downsize and contributed most of her furniture. We have raised a fair amount of money (covering rent for the first year) but are still short a few thousand dollars to cover their living expenses and would be very thankful for any additional donations. The treasurer of the St. John’s congregation, Mark Stalter, is taking care of the disbursement of funds collected for the family and can also issue tax receipts for any donations.

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