Bill Brownstein | Montreal Gazette
Publishing date: Mar 25, 2022
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of St. George is helping bring more war refugees to Montreal and help them start a new life.
Valentina Hayduk was three at the time, but she still so vividly remembers everything: “We had the clothes on our backs, and that was about it.”
That was 70 years ago. Valentina and her parents, Ukrainian refugees, arrived in Montreal penniless and without prospects or family here. Their only lead was the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of St. George in Lachine.
The church took them in, set them up with lodging and work, and the family never looked back.
“We’re trying to pay it forward now,” Valentina says. “We were given an opportunity to make a life here and we did. Now we have the opportunity to bring in families who have been under siege and to show them the warmth we received and try to make them feel at home with a culture they know.”
Valentina, her two younger brothers born here, Volodymyr and Anatoly Hayduk, and their respective wives, Lili Mospan and Olga Katola, are meeting in the basement of the same church to monitor the movements of the first four families from Kyiv they’ve undertaken to bring here. They’re joined by the church’s Father Gene Ruditch…
