Their adopted home for the holiday: Ukrainians mark Orthodox Christmas in Toronto

Alina Gladchenko never thought she would realize her dream to come to Toronto with her family after Russia’s war on Ukraine began.

The family had planned to immigrate to Canada, but the war was a sudden catalyst she wasn’t prepared for.

And her posts on nearly a dozen Facebook sites looking for a host family received so many negative comments about the city — the expense, the cold, Winnipeg would be better — that she took them down after two weeks.

It was a last-chance sighting of her missive on social media that prompted Torontonian Olena Veryha to invite the Ukrainian family of three to live with her.

Now, five months later, they’re sitting in the basement of Veryha’s home, with Gladchenko’s young son, Tisha, playing nearby, just days before the Gladchenko family will celebrate their first Orthodox Ukrainian Christmas in Canada on Saturday.

“I’m thinking about my family the last two weeks,” says Gladchenko, 31, speaking in English as well as Ukrainian, with Veryha translating. “And all these times in Kyiv when we go to our family. We meet with my brothers and sisters and grandmother and grandfather. It’s family days for us, because all the people in my family work very hard.”

Since March 17 of last year, the government has received more than 750,000 temporary resident applications and approved close to 480,000 of them, according to a Canadian government website.

On Friday, Gladchenko and her husband, Seva, as well as other guests, celebrated the traditional Ukrainian Christmas Eve feast at Veryha’s table, partaking of 12 dishes that are part of the “Holy Dinner.”

On Christmas Day — Saturday, according to the Julian calendar — Gladchenko said she planned to spend the day on the phone, talking to her extensive family, including 10 siblings and half-siblings, who have fled to countries such as Dubai, Spain, Poland — “the whole world,” says Gladchenko.

“I’m very happy because they are safe,” says Gladchenko, “but it’s sad for me because they can all meet because they’re in Europe or Dubai. And we are too far from all our family.”

Orthodox Ukrainian Christmas falls on Jan. 7 and New Year’s Day on Jan. 14, for those who follow the Julian calendar. But many parishes in the country have started observing Christmas on Dec. 25 according to the Gregorian calendar, which is used by the Western world, and New Year’s Day on Jan. 1.

Veryha and Gladchenko both say they are not particularly religious, but the holidays this year have had a deeper spiritual meaning for them.

“Everyone is praying for victory and for peace,” says Veryha, who was born in Canada to Ukrainian parents.

“The entire country is our family. We are all concerned for them,” she says. “And any news that comes out, it’s honestly, it’s like a dagger in your heart when you see that hospitals are being bombed. And schools are being bombed, universities, daycare centres. Pregnant women have been killed. Infants have been killed.”

Veryha says she recently spoke to a cousin in a part of Ukraine that hadn’t seen a lot of shelling and wished her a “Happy New Year.”

But her cousin said Ukrainians weren’t using the typical New Year salutation, instead wishing for “good health, victory and peace,” says Veryha. “Those are the three items that they want for 2023 and to continue on.”

Gladchenko also has relatives living in the war-torn country.

Her mother is in Russian-occupied Crimea, in an apartment that she wouldn’t leave for three months after anti-Ukrainian graffiti appeared in the lobby. And Gladchenko’s husband’s mother and brother are living in Kyiv.

Gladchenko left Kyiv the day after the Russians invaded on Feb. 24, 2022. Her husband was already out of the county, working in Moldova.

She packed up Tisha, who will be three at the end of January, and the family’s Bengal cat, and began a three-day journey to meet her husband in Romania. From there, the couple went to Poland, where Tisha’s godfather helped find them an apartment and child care.

In March, the family received a special visa to come to Canada, but they continued to work in Poland so they could save money for the trip to Canada, which they planned for the fall.

It was in August when Gladchenko began looking for a host family in Toronto, posting on numerous Facebook websites with other Ukrainians looking to find a new home.

“I tried to find host maybe two weeks,” says Gladchenko. “And I take the decision to delete all these posts because too much hate. It was too hard.”

And then Veryha reached out to Gladchenko.

“‘Hi. I have basement. I finished renovation in this basement and I can host you for the first time,’” read Gladchenko. “And I think, you know, it can’t be true because I so long tried to find someone and it’s so simple? ‘Please come on and live with us?’” she questioned.

Veryha, though, was a kindred spirit. Her father fought in the resistance army in Ukraine during the Second World War before being captured and held as a prisoner of war in Italy. Her mother fled the country and landed in a displaced persons camp in Germany. Her parents eventually met in England and then came to Canada where they were married.

But Gladchenko didn’t know that about Veryha when she was waiting for her flight to Canada in the Warsaw airport. And she still couldn’t believe that a person could be so generous or that Veryha would really be there to pick them up when they arrived.

Gladchenko spent the time waiting for her flight searching for inexpensive Airbnbs in Toronto.

But Veryha was there. She says Gladchenko’s post was the first one she read and she knew right away that she wanted to help them.

“I’ll tell you what it was,” says Veryha. “One, they had a child. Two, they came in tow with a cat. And I thought that this family is going to have a difficult time finding a place to live with a young child,” she says. “And the cat.”

“I thought, ‘This is my family because I can help them out.’”

It has, in fact, taken longer for the family to get settled than Gladchenko initially thought after that Facebook post looking for a host for two to four weeks.

Her husband, who is trained in microelectronics, sent out hundreds of resumes every day for three months after the family arrived. Only three interviews materialized, but one of them resulted in a job and he is working on a three-month contract. The hope is that he will find another contract for a year.

Gladchenko worked for 12 years as an esthetician. She plans to go back to work once her husband lands a more permanent job and the family finds an apartment.

But Gladchenko says they have no regrets about coming here.

Torontonians have been “amazing,” she says. And after a brief conversation in Ukrainian, Veryha translates for her: “Open, transparent, very good people.”