The Decibel - Ukrainian refugee children find a new start in Canada

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

The Grade 8 students of St. Demetrius Catholic School are in many ways like every other class – they’re nervous about going to high school, but excited for graduation. They’re also mostly refugees from the war in Ukraine, so they are also grappling with learning a new language and culture, and trying to set up a new life without knowing how long they’ll be here.The Globe’s education reporter Caroline Alphonso tells us the stories of some of these students, what they went through to get here and what it’s like starting a new phase of their lives somewhere they never thought they would be.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

What did you like about your grade eight year? Short and point of view. Track and field. Track and field, very good. Okay, pass it to somebody else. So what we're listening to here is a session run by a child and youth worker who has come to St. Demetrius Catholic School. We're sitting in a portable with about, I would say about just over 20 students, and all of

them are Ukrainian refugees. The session is about how to adapt to high school. A lot of these students have been here for a year. Some have been here for as few as, you know, six months, and they're nervous about the transition to a new high school. And so the child and youth worker is helping them navigate that. The feeling of being safe in your classroom. A teacher at the school, Daria Parzy, is translating for us. So being able to speak to a teacher who knows her language. To be able to safely play outside. For the little things every day that make me smile.

A lot of the students, they were nervous about entering high school, and so Daria Savarino, who's the child and youth worker who was there that day, was helping the children or the students understand what high school was like. So she was describing to them, for example, that there are two semesters, and in each semester they would be taking four courses, that they would be moving between different classes into different rooms for each course. Just some of the basic stuff of high school. There will be no more recess, right?

Okay. You don't have to carry it with you every day. You can put it in the closet. So you will get a locker and a lock to keep your belongings. Yes. I think the story was very important for us to tell because

even though these students are reaching a milestone here in the Canadian public education system, for them, their hearts are still in Ukraine. Today, education reporter Caroline Alfonso and Decibel producer Rachel Levy-McLaughlin bring us to St. Demetrius Catholic School. Of the 56 students graduating from the school this year, 33 of them are refugees from the war in Ukraine. We'll hear about what they went through to get here and how they're feeling about embarking on a new chapter of their lives somewhere they never thought they would be. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

I'm just narrating what we're doing. Yeah, we're just in front of the school right now, just buzzing to get in on this very rainy day. Do you want to check if the door is open? Yeah, she may have just opened it for us. Oh, she did. Okay, great. Let's go say hi to Lily, the principal of the school. St. Demetrius Catholic School is a school in Toronto's West End. It is one of three schools at the Toronto Catholic District School Board, which has a high concentration of Ukrainian students. When you walk in the building, on one wall, there's this giant mural.

It's quite colourful, and there's women holding what looks like wheat. There are flowers. There's a sign right in the front that reads Putin hands off Ukraine. And just outside the main office, there's another sign that says pray for Ukraine. In the morning, they play both the Ukrainian and the Canadian national anthems. And that is followed by the announcements that are also in both languages. When we visited the school, one of the things that we did was we sat down with a few of the graduates who are also Ukrainian refugees. My name is Vika. I've been in Canada five months ago. My name is Adriana and I came to Canada one year and one month ago.

My name is Nadia and I came to Canada six months ago. My name is Maxim and I came to Canada six months ago. My name is Maxim and I came to Canada one year ago. We were there for a celebration. We were there to visit and to speak with some of the kids who were graduating this year. But we were there because we knew that more than half of the grade 8 graduating class were Ukrainian refugee students. When we were at the school, we spoke with Lily Hordienko, the principal at the school. We started receiving students at the beginning of March of last year.

And in the beginning, most of the students that were arriving were arriving from the really affected areas of the war, so the eastern part of Ukraine. And then they started sort of trickling in in the beginning of March, and then by May we were getting, every day there were five, six coming. I mean, the numbers were going up as the days went on. In total now, since the war started, we've taken in over 250 students from Ukraine. So what has that meant in the school? So population-wise, we've doubled.

Having more than 200 students in their school over the past year, doubling their population, has also meant that they have had to add as many as eight portables onto their school grounds. Perfect timing. Okay, that is perfect timing. When we walked into the school on one of the days, just days before the graduation, one of the students, her name is Adriana, she's 13, and she was at a clothing rack of donated formal wear for the graduation. And she and two friends were giggling away as they looked through or combed through the rack of clothes. Can you tell me what you're doing? We are choosing my dream dress for graduation.

Oh. Which one are you liking? I like this one more. So she was looking through the rack, and the first thing she picked out was this black fitted dress. Why do you like that one? Because Coco Chanel always said that every woman needs to have one black dress in her closet. So she and her friends giggled out of the library and went to the bathroom to put on the dress.

A section of the library at the school is cornered off because what they do is, ever since they had this influx of refugee students, they want to help them. So there's a pantry at the school with flour and sugar and tea. But the community has been wonderful in opening their arms and their hearts to help these families that have been coming in need, primarily mostly without a father, coming here with basically one bag that they were able to pack. So it's been nice for our community to

be able to help to the extent that they have. The school has really tried to help its students this year. And one of the things that they do in the church beside the school, in the basement, there's a women's group that makes sandwiches for the students three times a week. So they bring that into the school just before the lunch hour. And whoever needs a meal can walk into this room and access a sandwich and some other items. The kids are all around 13 years old. And, you know, speaking with that age group, there's a lot of giggles. There's a bit of shyness about opening up.

It was really great to speak with them. They spoke mostly Ukrainian, especially among themselves, which kind of left us trying to figure out what they were saying at times. They had their inside jokes that they would all laugh at, and we would just sit there a bit puzzled. But they also were quite reflective of their journey here and what it meant for them to be here. We heard stories from the students about how they traveled to Canada. I came to Canada with my mom, my older siblings, my sister and my brother. I came with mother, father, brother and sister.

I go to Canada with my mom, dad and sister and friends. I come to Canada with my mother and my brother. Okay. And with my grandma. My father... Is in Ukraine? Yeah, and my grandpa. So Maxim, one of the students we spoke to who's 13,

he came here about a year ago. And he said when the war started, they did not have any school. And he remembers his mom saying that, you know, they were going to leave for Canada and come here because she wanted to give him and his younger sibling a better life. So when the war started, the city where I live,

they just said, we have a month's weekend and we don't do anything at school. So we just keep waiting what's just happening. And there my mom is going to think that's a war and we don't gonna have a good life there. So she want to give me and my brother a better life. When they were leaving Ukraine, Adriana said that her family told her that they were going to pick strawberries and they went to Poland

and she was a bit confused as to why they had ended up in an embassy. Because when this war started, like, I've been in Ukraine, like, for one week. And then my dad started to, like, said, do you want to go, like, to Poland? Because it's like a joke that we're going to Poland for strawberries. When we come to Poland, we go to like the embassy where they do the visas.

And I didn't understand why we were doing this. And like after a week, I asked and my mom said that we're going to Canada. We'll be right back. Adriana told us that her dad arrived in Canada about nine months after they landed. So they've been here for about a year now. And she describes feeling betrayed by her dad. And when we asked her more about that, Daria Parsi translated for us that she felt like her dad had come here he needed to spend time, more, but I just felt that it were like not enough, and it just felt weird, so, and I needed like, I think, I don't know,

three months or two to like, again, things that, like, I have, like, normal family. The students told us that when they got here, they settled into life. You know, they were telling us that the seasons here are similar to what they had in Ukraine. So we came at night, and it was really weird because, like, I don't know, kind of it's look like Ukraine so I didn't realize that where I am. A lot of them suffered from nervousness and anxiety. One of the students said he landed here six months ago but did not start school till five

months later only because he was so nervous about starting a new school, making new friends in a very different country. So what were you doing in between that time? So what we had, a settlement worker had contacted us, and there was some nervousness, right, about coming to school in Canada, not knowing anyone, what school would I go to, do I know people who speak Ukrainian? So Max was a little nervous about coming to school as all of them would have been nervous to come to school.

When we spoke with Lily, the principal at the school, she told me that many of the younger students who had come here were sort of innocent. They were sort of, you know, blending into the school system, adapting to what was happening around them. Whereas this grade eight class, they still were tethered to their homes. So they kind of felt a bit lost with, you know, where they were situated at this very moment. I find that this age group, the eights, the sevens, that sort of age group are the eights, the sevens, that sort of age group,

they're the ones that are struggling the most. They're kind of like that lost group because the younger ones, they're a little bit oblivious. The ones that are kind of like in between the older group that understands fully what's happening, left their friends, and everybody knows that adolescents and their friends, those are the most important things to them.

So they've been ripped away from their friends. None of them came here with knowing anybody. And it's harder to pick up the language when you're older. So for them, they've got the fear holding them back. When we spoke with Daria Saverino, she's the child and youth worker who was doing the workshop with the refugee students on the transition to high school. She described these children as quite resourceful and she felt that they would do transition to high school, she described these children as quite

resourceful, and she felt that they would do okay in high school. But she gets very emotional when she speaks about them because she's connected with these students over the year that she's been there. And I know they're very resourceful kids, actually. They're very, you know, if there's any concerns, they're, you know, they're not shy to ask. So I think that they're going to do okay. They're going to go there and there's going to be a lot of people who can speak the language, help them out. I hope they do okay. These kids have been through a lot over the past year and a half.

I know. It's so sad. So much trauma, things they've seen. And, yeah, it's very sad. So much trauma, things they've seen, and yeah, it's very sad. What I found interesting about almost all these students is that they were doing Ukrainian school in the evenings after they were done St. Demetrius. They would spend time doing their Ukrainian schoolwork. And when we asked them why they were still doing that, many of them said they need to keep up with their studies

because if and when they were to return to Ukraine, they don't want to fall behind. Because if we come back to Ukraine, they don't want to fall behind. Because if we come back to Ukraine, and if I come back, it will be very hard to find another school which can take me. That tells us about the position that these kids are in and how difficult it is. Because even though they are here and want to, you know, want to celebrate this moment, are present in this school, they still have an attachment to their homes. They still want to go back at some point, and therefore they still continue their Ukrainian school studies. So it's an interesting situation because these kids haven't necessarily come here for the purpose of immigration they've come here because they fled a war and through that they've had to navigate is it going to be something where we stay for high school for four years because that gives us an

opportunity to be a lawyer a teacher a doctor a different kind of job path versus going back to ukraine and maybe that's where family is, my pet is there, my dog is there. It's your home. So it's a hard thing for the students and their guardians who are here with them to navigate. We spoke with Louisa Mior, who is one of the grade eight teachers. She started at the school this past year and her class was all Ukrainian refugee students. Louisa described to us sort of how, you know, how it was all brand new when she started. Many of the students did not speak the language and how much she relied on Google's Translate to get through. Yes, I did not expect this at all coming to this school. I knew it was a Ukrainian

school, but I didn't realize that my entire class would be from Ukraine. So when I got here, it was a very big culture shock in so many ways. But I learned what was going on in Ukraine. And then they came over and would tell me stories. And it's been very rewarding. I don't want them to leave like certain I'm like can you just stay another year um it's it's unique it's like we have our own little family in there because they don't have any outside relationships with anyone other than who's in their class they don't have friends outside of school in their neighborhoods and stuff so it's pretty it's pretty special. When we sat down with the students, the five students, to talk to them about what they would miss about their schooling here at St. Demetrius, all of them

started giggling and laughing and describing sort of they would miss the funny moments from their time here. What are you going to miss about being here? Funny moments. Sorry, what? Funny moments. What was the funniest moment? At one point during the conversation, Adriana looks over at Luisa Mior and says,

can you go with us to Bishop Allen, which is the high school that she's going to be attending in the fall? Can you go with us to Bishop Allen? Yes, I'm going to come with you. Good. They were so excited about graduation. They were so excited about what they were going to wear. And they were so excited about the party that would follow. They had transformed the basement of the church into a bit of a dinner and dance party at the end of their graduation ceremony. One of the things that they were so excited to do at the graduation party is Dance the Hopak,

which is a traditional Ukrainian dance where you squat and you kick your legs up in the air. Which one, what are you most excited for, for graduation? Dance the Hopak. Dance, yes. How about you? Dance. What are you excited about?

Dance is my health. Very excited. Yeah. And some nervous. Nervous. Why are you nervous? Because this will be the last day when we will be together all class. I'm scared if I fall off stage.

How are you feeling about graduating? For me, graduation is like finish one part of my life and start a new part, go to high school and teach new things, have new friends and have a new experience. How do you feel about going to high school? Very nervous. Really? What makes you nervous about it? I don't know how, because, okay. I have problem with my English. And it's a big problem. And I'm nervous. Any kid going to high school next year is nervous.

You're now going from the big fish, you know, in the school being grade 8 and having all the younger ones, to now being grade 9 and having all the older kids. So having a language barrier is something that these kids always have to overcome. So they have lots of perseverance. And to hear them have these fun moments where they're giggling, trying on the dresses, and, you know and talking about, oh, how did you look this and that? Those are those little moments that you're like,

it makes it all worth it. It's a lot of work, but it makes it all worth it. Do you all want to return back to Ukraine? Mm-hmm. Yes? Why do you say yes? Because Ukraine is our home and like people in ukraine like i know they like feel more like they they would like rather stand like and protest to Russia.

I don't know, I just feel like they're very strong and they're even stronger than the people who are now out of the country. So I want to come back because the wife there, now it's like all of the people are just, I think, stronger. Because in Ukraine, because my old friends, my another family and my dad. But regardless of whether they stay here in Canada or leave to go back home,

Lily said that they had changed the lives of those who were staff members at the school and other students at the school. They had left their mark there. Whether they stay or whether they go back, they've changed our lives here at the school to a point where none of us will be the same. Then on June 22nd, they finally graduated elementary school. They received their grade eight diplomas, and the ceremony was held in the church next door. The students took up three rows right in the front. Some of the students, including Adriana, had the Ukrainian flag draped along their shoulders.

It was such a celebratory moment. Families sat behind them, just beaming, clapping. It was such a nice celebration for these students as they set off into high school. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our summer producer is Nagin Nia. Our producers are Madeline White and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer. And Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. We're taking the long weekend off. And guess what? Manika is back in the host chair on Tuesday with a new episode. Thanks so much for listening and have a great long weekend.