A local woman is reaching out to the community in hopes of helping her parents find work and start their lives in Canada, after fleeing war-torn Ukraine.
LaSalle resident Anastasia Petrenko’s family is one of the first Ukrainian migrant families to arrive in Canada.
Petrenko’s 61 year old parents, and her 87 year old grandmother fled for four days through Ukrainian backroads to reach Moldova, before eventually making their way to Canada.
Now they’re facing the harsh reality of having to support themselves in a new, foreign country.
Petrenko says they left everything behind, and the relief of getting to Canada doesn’t overshadow the difficulty they’ve faced.
“It’s a bit better in terms of our emotional state because there’s no bombing, and my parents can sleep at night. But it’s not easy. My grandma is feeling worse now after this journey, and now she’s adapting to a new timezone, a new place to stay, so it’s been hard on her,” Petrenko said.
She says the family reunion at the airport once her family arrived was sweet, but didn’t quite go smoothly.
“It was really sweet. Actually, it was kind of traumatizing too, because they were detained at the customs office at Pearson Airport for three hours because customs was running extra background checks since they were some of the first Ukrainians coming in,” Petrenko began. “But, once we were reunited, of course it was a huge relief.”
Petrenko says her father is an engineer who can no longer work because of the language barrier, but nonetheless her parents are eager to start working.
“They have energy, they want to work, because they understand the new reality they’re facing where they need to make income. My dad used to be a building engineer, but professionally he can’t perform because that requires lots of technical terms. So, we’re just looking for any job that they can do without this requirement of having really good english.”
Petrenko adds her parents are starting their lives all over again at 61 years of age. She’s looking for any possible leads on jobs that don’t require fluent English, and can get her parents on their feet.
She’s also set up a Gofundme fundraiser to help kickstart her family’s new life in Canada.