A mother and her young daughter who are spending their first Christmas in Montreal after fleeing Ukraine are having to reinvent a holiday they celebrated so differently back home.
On a cold December day, Hanna Opanasenko opens the door to her Ahunstic apartment with a warm smile, her seven-year-old daughter Vira peeking out from behind her legs.
The table is piled high with Vira’s schoolbooks. Some are in French, others in Ukrainian. Otherwise, the apartment is sparsely furnished with just the essentials.
Opanasenko arrived in Montreal in the spring. As she recounts her journey her voice quietens and her smile vanishes.
"It was the day after the war started,” she said. "My husband and I were sitting on the couch all day reading news. We couldn’t believe it was happening. We lived in an area near the Kyiv airport. When the house nearby was attacked, we decided it's time to go."
She and her daughter, along with her mother and husband Mykola, tried to flee quickly toward the Polish border. Instead, they were stuck in a nearly 500-kilometre traffic jam between Kyiv and Lviv.
"Periodically, we would hear the bomb sirens. We were so scared. It was terrifying," she said.
Once the family arrived at the Polish border, it was time to say goodbye -- not just to her home country, but also to her husband who was forced to stay and fight.
Like so many other mothers and children, they arrived in Canada in the spring. "We are alone here. No friends, no relatives," she said.
They’ve had to celebrate birthdays, Vira’s first day of French school and their first Halloween, alone. Now, they are getting ready for their first holiday season.
"We are ready to embrace the Canadian way of celebrating Christmas," she said, pointing out that Ukrainians celebrate differently.
They were able to maintain some traditions, notably when Vira performed in a St. Mykolai celebration with other Ukrainian children. She is also learning to read the Ukrainian language.
Despite embracing their life in Canada, Opanasenko still longs for home. She spends every day checking the news and anxiously awaiting updates from her husband. Recent attacks on Ukraine’s power grid have her especially worried.
"Without light, without electricity, without water -- I cannot imagine how we would survive this," she said.
Vira says she misses Kyiv, but what she longs for is time with her father. Opanasenko, though, is confident that she made the right decision.
"I thought about whether to stay, to be a soldier," she said. "I choose to be a mom because no one can do this for me."
