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Originally Posted by Hack&Lube
Saw a news article about a job fair in Calgary for Ukrainian refugees over the weekend. 30 employers were there like the Sheraton, etc.
Any other uplifting stories about Ukrainian refugees in Calgary that people have come across?
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My wife recently started a job at a European market here. We didn't attend this specific job fair, but wouldn't surprise me if her employer was there recruiting due to the number of Ukrainians now working there. When she interviewed a few weeks ago she said there was only a few other Ukrainians working there. Then the job fair happened. When she started working at the store last week she said it was now 90% Ukrainian workers there. Quite a few refugees, including one girl from Odessa who is here by herself. The workers are allowed to take most of the food that gets rotated out, but her team decided to donate most of it to this girl to help her out.
As great as it is that lots of UA refugees have arrived in Canada, I know it's also very bittersweet for most of them. Canada is a hard place to immigrate to. Not only getting approved, but supporting yourself here is hard as an immigrant once you're here. Most importantly, most of those refugees DON'T want to be here. They want to go home back to their homeland. They want to live their lives as it was prior to the war, have their same routines and deal with the same issues they had before. Ukrainians are well aware of the problems their country has. But it's THEIR problems to deal with (not Russia's business to interfere with) and they are fiercely loyal of their country. Canada is a great place to live once your accustomed to living here and if you have your ducks in a row. If you don't....well, good luck. I can't imagine boarding a plane and arriving here with nothing other than your suitcase and no plan once arriving. This city is hard-mode for many things if you don't know how to do things. It's hard enough moving toa new country on whim. But add on the issues of trauma from what you might have witnessed or experienced during the war AND the never-ending stress of worrying about your loved ones still at home? It's not easy.