Due to the war, Russians aren’t welcome in many countries and the couple can’t move back to Ukraine
Dmitrii Trdatiyan said he laments how the war in Ukraine has torn families apart in a country of deeply intertwined nationalities.
“We don’t understand this war, very many families of Russian and Ukrainian (background) were friendly, happy and are now divided,” said Trdatiyan, a Russian national of Armenian descent.
“I just don’t why this war had to happen.”
After the couple found each other on the internet and were married in Poland in June 2022 — four months after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine — Trdatiyan said the conflict’s fallout led to their arrival in Canada and little choice but to make their new life work.
Due to the war, Russians aren’t welcome in many countries and the couple couldn’t move back to Kril’s native Ukraine due to his citizenship.
“For Russian citizens, doors are closing but in Canada, there’s a chance of us to get together,” said the man who went to Russia from Armenia in 1990 to study and automatically became a Russian citizen with the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991.
“We’re very happy here because nobody asks where we’re from.”
Kril, 45, arrived in Canada last December with her 12-year-old daughter, with Trdatiyan following last March.
Before that, the man said his life in Poland had become untenable.
“When we lived in Poland, my employer said he couldn’t give me any more work because I have a Russian passport,” said Trdatiyan, 50.
Fortunately, a program operated by the Calgary Catholic Immigrant Society (CCIS) connected the couple with a dairy farm employer near Wainwright and an affordable apartment in the town 420 kilometres northeast of the city.
The program — helping to relieve the pressure on Alberta’s most populous municipality, which is hosting as many as 30,000 Ukrainian newcomers — is also meant to boost parts of rural Alberta struggling with population and workforce decline, said Ricardo Morales, CCIS director of community integration services and southern Alberta rural projects.
“There can be a language barrier but when people have the opportunity to show competency, it’s really a different story,” said Morales, adding the program has relocated dozens of Ukrainian newcomers from Calgary to rural centres this year.
For Kril, who helped operate a farm in western Ukraine’s Khmelnytski Oblast before coming to Canada, the new rural arrangement that began a month ago is a good fit.
“I can’t see a huge difference (from farming in Ukraine), only a few things,” she said through an interpreter.
“I like to see how the animals grow up — it’s not just a business, it’s like (assisting) a child going from a baby to adult.”
As for her husband: “Dmitrii is a very good cook and mechanic and is learning farming.”
A typical day at the farm could mean the couple begin milking cows at 4 a.m. on Remy Rajotte’s small family farm seven kilometres outside Wainwright, a town of 6,700 people.
Feeding the farm’s pigs and chicken often follows that task, said the couple.
With peace and increasingly stability in their lives, there’s no going back, said Kril.
Trdatiyan said he’s impressed with the generosity of Canadians, recalling how his Wainwright apartment building manager provided a desk at no charge for their daughter.
“It’s fantastic, every day is unbelievable,” he said. “People want to help.”