A Ukrainian family who fled to refuge in rural Kilkenny are preparing to move to Canada, thanks to the support of the Irish community that took them in and housed them in a disused parochial building.
The Yevsiutins were among the first Ukrainians to arrive in Ireland in March last year after leaving their home in Ladyzhyn, a rural but bustling medieval town of more than 22,000 people in the southwest of the country.
Parents Oleksandr ‘Olex’ (40) and Natasha (39) along with their children Oleksandr (14), Anastasia (12) and Davyd (8) and their pet tortoise, aptly named Hope, endured a nine-day journey which saw the family move by foot, on a special evacuation train to Warsaw, Poland, then on to France by commercial rail and finally by ferry to Rosslare Europort.
The family chose to come to Ireland because a distant relative, with whom they lodged for a day in Warsaw during their evacuation, knew someone in the Irish consulate who said it would be a “good place to come to”.
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The family arrived in Kilkenny thanks to Stephanie McDermott, a community development project worker with Carlow County Development Partnership, and Liam O’Sullivan a business executive with the biotechnology company Sanofi, along with other community activists, after they made contact with the Kilkenny Ukraine Response Team.
The family moved into the vacant Parochial House in Dunamaggin. It is a rural farming area with a population of between 300 and 400 people, and the family came to live a very different life to that which they left.
The local community embraced them, providing accommodation, food, clothing and lifts into the city to sort out Government help. The two youngest integrated into the local primary school in Dunamaggin, while Oleksandr Jnr started secondary in Ballyhale.
Natasha began English lessons and met numerous local people calling to the old Parochial House on the Main Street. A homemaker in Ukraine, she became widely known for her dressmaking and tailoring skills.
Olex Snr, who had worked as a farm labourer, found a full-time job in a sign-making company, Highway Safety Developments Ltd, in nearby Knocktopher.
The local GAA club was a big help, with Davyd taking up hurling and Anastasia Gaelic football while Olexsandr started rowing on the river Barrow in Graiguenamanagh.
A brief visit back to Ukraine in November by Olex and Natasha convinced them they could never return again to their devastated homeland and the family’s future lay elsewhere . Natasha was able to convince her mother to travel back to Ireland with them.
News that the family had made the decision to move to near Montreal in Canada was met “great sadness but with positivity that they had helped a family to have the courage and determination to move on”, explained Mr O’Sullivan.
Reflecting on his family’s arrival in Dunamaggin Olex Snr said:
“As the Russian forces got closer, it was our duty to get them [our children] to safety as quickly as possible. We were so thrilled when we realised there was a community ready to welcome us and to help our family settle down.
“Everyone in Dunamaggin has been fantastic, all the community groups, the schools, sports clubs, work colleagues and all the children’s new friends. Dunamaggin is a special place and we will be forever grateful for the welcome we have received here.”
“Sadly it’s not looking like a return to our home in Ukraine is an option for us at the moment and we feel Canada is the right move for us. Canada has a good programme that supports people who have had to flee from Ukraine and our English language skills have improved so much we feel we will integrate quickly to our new life in Canada.”
Mr O’Sullivan said that locals will miss the family who have blended in well and found many new friends.
“It was important for us as a community to be able to take positive action and support a family who were impacted by the war. We really felt we could make a difference as a community and we’d like to think we did,” added Mr O’Sullivan..
“Whilst we will miss the Yevsiutins, their accommodation here was always temporary and we feel we did everything we could to help them integrate and overcome what was a very traumatic experience for a family with such young children.
Ms McDermott, who is also involved in a number of refugee support groups across Carlow and Kilkenny for several years, also feels it has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for the local community.
“We can become desensitised to the horrors of war, displacement, loss and separation. The Yevsiutins, like many other families, are faced with the horrors of being forced to uproot and start another life in another country.
“Dunamaggin, in no small part, made the process of temporary resettlement a positive experience for the family.”