LEMBERG, Sask. — Vitalii easily swings the large combine around as it gobbles up short swaths of crop between a slough and the road.
He watches the monitors and listens to the messages coming through from the two other combines on the field, even though his English isn’t great.
He’s been in Lemberg, Sask., less than a week but it’s his second day harvesting on Kerry and Rebecca Maurer’s farm.
What’s more, he wasn’t a farmer in Ukraine.
“For me, it is easy,” he said of driving the large equipment. “I like driving.”
Vitalii doesn’t want his last name used or his picture taken. He spent five years in the Ukrainian army, in the Donbas region, not seeing his family for three of those years. His brother is currently in the army and he is worried.
These are tense times and while he, his wife and two young children have made it to Canada, their families remain at risk.
Vitalii was away in Poland when he got the call Feb. 24 that there had been a “very big boom” in Chernihiv, his home city northeast of Kiev. Those booms continued as the Russians took out bridges and cut off the city. The family was also cut off from parents and relatives in their hometown of Mena to the east.
“I was scared about my family,” he said.
He wanted to go home.
The Russian soldiers, he said, were shooting civilians, including children and older people. But his wife told him she and the children were safe and he should wait for them to join him in Europe.
For a month, they lived under the occupation and arrived in Canada in July via Slovakia and Germany.
In Dykanka, in central Ukraine, Tetiana Levchenko also heard the booms.
“I was at home,” she recalled in August. “I was going to work in the morning. At 7 a.m. I hear boom.”
Her arms and hands fly in the air to signify the impact the sound had on her.
“I open my telephone and I read (the Russians) are starting war.”
She said it was different than what many consider the start of the war eight years ago, when the Russians annexed Crimea and parts of the Donbas in the south.
“That was far from us, but this war,” her voice trails off and the tears come.
She and her husband, Yurii Boiko, have left their families behind to come to Canada and worrying about them takes its toll.
In Ukraine, she worked two jobs as a school psychologist and doing manicures and pedicures. That first day, the school staff were told to stay home.
“We went to the centre of our town,” Levchenko said.
She speaks for the couple as Yurii is still working to learn English. He is a welder and a truck driver and helped his brother manufacture cabinets.
People were panic-buying food and medications and asking what had happened. There was no fuel left at the gas stations. Long line-ups at enlistment offices formed as boys and men volunteered to fight the enemy.
For three days, they stayed in their home city, but then it was time to go to Poland. The car trip took several days and they slept in the vehicle even though it was February.
They arrived in Canada in June and moved to Lemberg where work was available. Levchenko is working for Amy Brown, who operates a market garden, and Boiko is a welder at Pattison Liquid Systems.
“I feel now very good,” said Levchenko. “We have very good people who help us. We have work, we have money, but we are very worried for our parents and sad for Ukraine.”
The tears flow both ways here.
Kerry Maurer is a member of the Lemberg Community Refugee Fund, a group that began with coffee shop talk in April and soon raised money to bring Ukrainians to the town of about 300 people.
He gets emotional when he talks about the efforts people have made and what the newcomers have gone through.
“The community has been just outstanding,” he said. “Anything we’ve needed, they’ve come up with it.”
There were four families in Lemberg and Neudorf area by August and he said there could be eight families by mid-November.
Volunteers lined up housing, clothing, cars and jobs. School-age children are in class. The G3 terminal at Melville is taking 50-bushel donations and contributing that value to the refugees.
“All of them are turning out really well,” said Maurer. “They have such a good work ethic. They clean equipment like it was brand new.”
The key to bringing refugees to Canada is the government’s Host Initiative, which pairs with local organizations to sponsor people.
The local group promises to support the refugees for a minimum of three months.
It hasn’t all gone smoothly, said Maurer. One family got caught up in flight delays and missed connections and has ended up staying in Ontario.
Language is a hurdle but Maurer said their English has improved dramatically. Rebecca Maurer is a retired teacher who helps them with language skills once a week and others are taking online classes.
As much as the community is helping the Ukrainians, they are helping the community. There is a definite lack of labour in the area.
Even if there wasn’t, Maurer feels a strong desire to help and would find a job for someone.
He said while many refugees are from the cities and want to go to a large Canadian city, the rural life offers something that the cities can’t: that strong sense of community and job certainty.
There are businesses in the area looking for more farm workers, electricians, general labourers and more.
Rick Pattison, who owns Pattison Liquid Systems, is a member of the committee that brought the families to Lemberg and Boiko’s employer.
“He is an extremely good welder,” he said of Boiko. “I can’t say enough about their work ethic.”
His company employs about 20 people, making it a major employer in the town.
“We certainly want to help out, and like everybody else we also need employees,” he said.
In the weeks since they first arrived, they Ukrainians have settled into the community and become friends. Still, there is no guarantee they will stay. Pattison said they seem content to live the small-town quiet life right now and one family is talking about staying and buying a house.
The newcomers have travelled a bit to nearby Melville and Yorkton, where they say they do have some trouble understanding the local Ukrainian slang, and Regina and Saskatoon.
Levchenko is proudly sporting a new Regina hoodie on this harvest day.
Every morning she and her mom talk by FaceTime so they can see each other.
“My mom is 67 and she does not want another country,” Levchenko said.
Her brother is still there, too, as is Boiko’s brother and father.
“I left my house and my garden and my dog,” she added, tears threatening again.
“I want of course to (go back) to Ukraine and see my mother and all my relatives but I understand my life before the war, it won’t be the same,” she said.
The couple is happy to be able to see a landscape similar to home and Boiko said when he was a little boy his grandma lived in a small town just like Lemberg.
Vitalii, on the combine, similarly enjoys the peace and quiet of the rural Saskatchewan life. He and his wife had looked into coming to Canada long before the war started. After university he had worked in sales before his army contract.
“In Canada, we are not afraid,” he said. “We will stay. After six months we will apply for permanent residence.”
However, he cannot say, after just two weeks in the country, whether they will stay in Lemberg. His wife prefers the city atmosphere.
“I like people from Canada because when I go to the gas station, they say ‘welcome to Canada,’ he said. “They smile.”
One thing he doesn’t like is the fact that his recent training and work as a truck driver in Europe won’t be recognized in Canada. He will have to spend money to re-train if he chooses that career.
Pattison said he would like to see equivalency among professions so that smaller areas could attract health-care workers and others to sustain their communities.
It would mean a lot to all involved.
“We picked them up at the airport and it’s quite humbling to see somebody come with all of their life’s possessions in one suitcase,” he said.
