Quebec has welcomed its first victims of the Ukrainian conflict in recent days. Two families from Mariupol have just landed in Montreal to join members of their extended family.
Iurii, Olena and their three children, Tymofii, Davyd and Rut, arrived overnight from Sunday to Monday. They have since resided in the house of a Quebec couple from the South Shore in the Montreal region. So did Iurii’s sister and her family, who arrived on Friday.
Their 19-year-old niece Yana Kapeluhova has taken many steps to bring them here. The young woman launched a crowdfunding campaign on the Internet to pay for their plane tickets and their visa applications. As of this writing on Tuesday, she’s raised nearly $30,000.
Originally from Mariupol, Yana, her brothers and their parents are trying to bring their entire extended family to Quebec, the equivalent of 8 households with a total of 40 people. A third group is expected in the coming days.
The arrival in Montreal of these war exiles comes as thousands of Ukrainians are struggling to complete their formalities to come to Canada. As Radio-Canada reported on Monday, Ukrainians are unable to obtain appointments with Canadian consular services in Europe to take their biometric tests.
Left earlier
How did they manage to arrive so early? “We made the request right away, without waiting for the new program,” explains Ms.me Kapeluhova.
The new reception program for Ukrainian nationals “Canada-Ukraine Emergency Travel Authorization (AVUCU)” has been in effect since March 17.
No Ukrainian participating in this program has yet set foot on Canadian territory, since the processing of files takes at least two weeks, said Tuesday the spokesperson for the federal Minister of Immigration, Sean Fraser.
When the AVUCU was launched, relatives of Mr.me Kapeluhova had already applied for temporary visas in order to obtain refugee status, their decision to settle in Canada permanently having already been made. “It allowed them to travel to Canada faster,” says the young woman. The first family, for example, was able to take their biometric tests in Germany around March 10 even before there were any waiting lists.
On the other hand, family members who are still on the other side of the ocean are caught up, like the others, in the various stages of the process to obtain their passports and visas.
“The only way to make an appointment for [passer un test] biometrics, it’s online, but it doesn’t work. […] The system must send by e-mail a password which is valid for thirty minutes, but by the time we receive it, it is no longer valid,” laments Yana Kapeluhova.
The parents of the young woman immigrated to Canada in 2013. When the first shots rang out at the end of February, they urged their relatives to leave everything to come and join them in Quebec.
“Tensions were rising and rising in recent years, and some saw the conflict coming, so they were able to move a little further ahead and closer to the border,” the girl said. “Normally it would have taken ten hours to get to the border, but in their case it took two or three days. »
Despite its apparent luck, the family has had its share of hardships. One of M’s unclesme Kapeluhova died after being hit by a missile while driving to help people trapped in the rubble of a building. And some cousins of the parents would still be in Mariupol. “We have no contact with them and we know that they have been missing for two weeks. »
Resources
The duty was unable to meet the families as they are currently in quarantine due to measures to counter COVID-19.
To find host families, Yana Kapeluhova’s mother has posted a classified ad in the delicatessen where she works, on the South Shore. Is she looking for other people to welcome the rest of her family? “It would be wonderful if we could find places, but for sure we will start to look at it more closely when we have the dates of their arrival”, replies the young girl.
Normally it would have taken ten hours to get to the border, but in their case it took two or three days
For the rest, she looks for community resources to provide them with clothes, hygiene accessories, beds…
She says that “it’s going very, very well for them here”. “They are very grateful, they say ‘thank you’ a million times. There is such a big contrast between the atrocity of things they see there and what they receive in Canada. The kids don’t really realize what’s going on. They are happy to have new toys. For them, everything is new. »