Véronique said to me: “We want to tell you the story of our Ukrainians, but you don’t name us, we don’t do this to get flowers… Deal? I said, “Deal.” »
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Véronique and her boyfriend Simon have a house somewhere in Montreal. A courtyard. In the yard, there is a tree with a rope full of knots, for their two daughters to swing, clinging to it with their feet.
The house is big. And when Ukraine was attacked by the Russians, when they saw the devastation, when they saw the families fleeing the bombs, Véronique and Simon felt helpless, like everyone else.
As a man, a woman, what do you want to do to hold back the pincers of History?
Nothing, you can’t do anything.
The reprobation of men and women of good will, around the world, has no impact on the geostrategic seed measuring contests of the megalomaniacs who run the world…
Véronique: “I told my boyfriend: I want to welcome Ukrainian refugees…”
Simon said, “Okay, go. The couple agreed to take in a mother and child, figuring they would stay in the empty room upstairs. It would be his small contribution to try to restore the order of the world.
And one thing leading to another, word of mouth – someone who knows someone who knows a Ukrainian seamstress (one thing leading to another, I was saying) – we offered Véronique and Simon to welcome a Ukrainian woman who was going coming soon to Montreal with her child…
Then, the day before, the lady called us and told us that it was no longer working. But that she was desperately looking for a family to welcome a Ukrainian family, the father, the mother and their two daughters… And a 20-month-old little boy.
Simon
Simon and Véronique looked at each other: cristie, we’re going to put them where, we don’t have room…
They were going to decline.
Then their contact sent the description of this Ukrainian family. The two girls? They are exactly the same age as Simon and Véronique’s two daughters, within a few weeks…
The eldest of the Ukrainian couple is named Sofia.
The first name of the eldest of Simon and Véronique: Sophia.
If it’s not fate, that…
Well, there, Simon and Véronique went down to the basement, looked at the layout of the place, wondered if, by packing a little furniture, we could not…
Photo Dominick Gravel, LA PRESSE
When they left Kyiv, the little Ukrainian family first fled to Yulia’s family cottage.
It could be.
Thus, for two weeks, Oleksii, Yulia and their children Sofia, Barbara and Andreï have been living in the basement of the Montreal house of Véronique and Simon.
During the week, Ukrainians live in the basement. They have access to the kitchen, on the ground floor, the two families live in parallel. On Saturday and Sunday, the two families rub shoulders on the ground floor and in the courtyard, take meals together.
“The idea, says Véronique, is that we don’t step on each other’s toes. For it to last…”
I went to visit the two families very recently in the courtyard of Véronique and Simon. The girls were running everywhere, little Quebecers and little Ukrainians who seemed like four sisters: dark hair, brown eyes, the same inexhaustible energy.
Photo Dominick Gravel, LA PRESSE
“I miss home,” says Yulia.
Oleksii is doing very well in English. For Yulia, it’s harder. Fortunately, there is Google Translate, on the phone. They told me about the shock on February 24 when Russia invaded their country. Yulia: “It was the sound of a bomb that woke us up. The feeling: disbelief, first. I should point out that before the invasion, in Ukraine, very few people believed that Putin was not bluffing. Oleksii: “At worst, we said to ourselves, he will try to take the Donbass…”
Except no, it was all-out war, with the ambition to steal all of Ukraine from the Ukrainians, to take Kyiv in two days.
They told me about their departure from the suburbs of Kyiv with three backpacks and their three children, the flight to Yulia’s family chalet, a chalet which was already full, when they arrived, full of family members, d friends, strangers. They told me that at the beginning, there was nothing to eat, that we had to beg in the neighborhood…
Oh, I forgot. Oleksii is a biologist. He worked in in vitro fertilization, in three centers around Kyiv. He took a little time to get out to the chalet, because he had decided to go and freeze embryos, feeling responsible for the dreams of the parents-clients of said clinics…
Photo Dominick Gravel, LA PRESSE
Oleksii, a biologist, was offered a six-month contract at a fertility clinic in Montreal.
The chalet – the dacha, as they say – was packed.
” How was it ? »
The Ukrainian searches for his words, fails. He pulls out his phone, finds Google Translateenters words, shows me the translation:
“Trouble unites people! Everyone wanted to survive. There was only solidarity. »
The train to Poland, Ukrainians of fighting age being told to leave the train at the border, to return home. Oleksii was able to leave Ukraine for only one reason: he has three children. Under the bar of the three children, you were prevented from leaving the country.
After Poland, we had to decide where to go, says Oleksii. Denmark? Mexico? United States ? Canada? The biologist sent messages to all his foreign contacts in the fertility world. It was a Montrealer who answered him, offering him a six-month contract here…
What followed was a long geographical-bureaucratic crossroads – from Poland to Slovakia, via Austria, Germany and France – to obtain papers for Canada.
They finally landed on May 9, heading to Blainville, for temporary accommodation. On the 12th, Oleksii was at work, in fertility, in a clinic in Montreal…
I listened to them, and I had a headache in front of their journey, in front of the upheavals that this family has experienced since February 24.
Véronique and Simon served raw vegetables and sausages, then the little girls stopped running in the yard to come and eat. Oleksii showed me pictures of the family’s life in Ukraine, pre- and post-invasion. He praised the generosity of people who, like his hosts, welcome and help people like him and his family. Yulia wanted to say something, was trying to find her words, I said to her: “Go by Google TranslateJulia…”
She typed words, showed me the screen: “I want to study, because I’m depressed and I miss home. But we can’t go home. »
She wants to learn French as quickly as possible, to integrate.
Photo Dominick Gravel, LA PRESSE
Sofia is having fun in Véronique and Simon’s yard.
In Simon and Véronique’s large courtyard, I watched them, these two families. I wrote down everything, the little cries of joy from the four little girls running around and the words of the parents, both beautiful and terrible. And I thought of the words of Gilles Vigneault, as often when it comes to these people from everywhere who land here, for a thousand and one reasons…
Of this great lonely country
I scream before I shut up
To all men on earth
My home is your home
Between its four walls of ice
I put my time and my space
To prepare the fire, the place
For the humans of the horizon
And humans are of my race
Yulia, I translated these words for you, so that you can read them in this column, I hope they will soothe your sadness, which I know is immense:
З цієї великої самотньої країни
Я кричу, перш ніж замовкнути
Усім людям на землі
Мій дім-це твій дім
Між його чотирма стінами льоду
Я вкладаю свій час і свій простір
Щоб підготувати багаття, місце
Для людей горизонту
А люди моєї раси
Long live freedom. Long live brotherhood.
And fuck Putin.