Giving and Receiving

Volodymyr Kish

One of my cousins from Ukraine, a delightful twenty five year old young woman by the name of Nadia, has spent the past month visiting us and seeing Canada for the first time.  Our extended family here has been taking turns in hosting her, so that she has been able to cover a fair bit of geography, including the greater Toronto area, the Niagara Peninsula, Ottawa, Montreal, and a scenic chunk of cottage country including Lake Simcoe, Algonquin Park, and the area around Bancroft and Barry’s Bay.  We’ve had Ukrainian cousins visit us before, so this was not exactly a new experience, but it was different nonetheless in that unlike our previous visitors who primarily came from the village or “selo”, Nadia is a well-educated professional with a Master’s degree who teaches English at the Ivan Franko University in Lviv, and has done some travelling outside of Ukraine to other European countries including Poland, Germany and Italy.

In many ways, Nadia is representative of the younger generation of knowledgeable Ukrainians seeking to make a successful life within an uncertain and difficult environment.  She has had some experience seeing what life is like in other countries and has no illusions about the challenges that Ukraine faces in trying to bootstrap its way out of the economic and political morass created first by the Soviet regime, and in more recent decades by the political chaos that seems to have become a fixture in Ukrainian life.  Nonetheless,  she is making a good go of it in Ukraine, aided and abetted by a generous dose of smarts, a disciplined hard working nature, a close-knit and supportive family, and a strong religious faith that provides the foundation for a strong set of principles and ethics.

It was a joy to have her with us, and in particular, through her perspective and observations, to gain an interesting new appreciation for the world in which we live here in Canada.  We came to realize over the past month how much of our lives and our surroundings we take for granted.  My brother had given Nadia his digital camera early during her visit, and it was fascinating for us to watch what she would photograph – things that we would not normally notice because we had become so inured to their presence that they normally become invisible to us.  As an example, she shot countless pictures of squirrels and chipmunks.  Although there are some squirrels in Ukraine, there is only one type, grey squirrels, and she was thrilled to see so many different colours amongst our native population.  And chipmunks were a real delight – there apparently are no chipmunks in Ukraine.

She shot many pictures of buildings, particularly skyscrapers, and of our roads and highways.  As those who have visited Ukraine know, the road system there can be frightful, with the area of potholes often outspanning the area of continuous pavement.  There is no equivalent in Ukraine to the type of eight or twelve lane superhighways that are common in the Toronto area.  The scope and excellent condition of our highway system was a revelation to her.

Our cottage country and wilderness areas were another source of enchantment for her.  Our tour through Algonquin Park and cottage country was an endless series of wonderful experiences for her.

She could not believe how many lakes of all shapes and sized dominate our Canadian landscape.  In Ukraine, there are very few lakes.  There are a number of large rivers, and in rural areas there may be small ponds, but the kind of topography that we enjoy in our cottage country simply does not exist in Ukraine.  Therefore, going on a canoe ride at the cottage was a bold and somewhat intimidating adventure for her.

The other thing that distinguishes our society is the ready availability of an endless variety of consumer goods of all kinds.  Her family has been renovating their little house in the fair sized town of Zhovkva for years now, hampered by the fact that getting basic items such as paint, building materials, plumbing fixtures etc. is a major challenge.  There are now a few box stores in Western Ukraine, like Canadian Tire or the Home Depot that stock almost anything you need for building or renovating in a wide variety of styles and options.  But in general, finding necessary supplies can entail much scrounging and often expeditions across the border into Poland to find something of decent quality at an affordable price.

All in all, although Nadia’s visit was undoubtedly a once in a lifetime experience for her, it was also a valuable experience for us too, in that it gave all of us a new-found appreciation for what we have here, and made us notice things that we unconsciously and regrettably take for granted. In giving, we have also received a lot in return.