'A miracle': Windsor-area residents unite to bring 11 family members to Canada from Ukraine

An Ontario woman is grateful to residents of the Windsor-Essex area who are working together to bring her 11 family members from Ukraine to Canada.

"It's something like a miracle," said Nataliya Kashchenko of the help she's received to bring her family to LaSalle, where they're expecting to stay for several months. "They told me, Nataliya, no worries. Just bring your family. Do the paperwork."

Kashchenko, an ophthalmologist who's originally from Kyiv, has been living in Marathon, Ont., with her husband Julian since 2019.

She has a number of relatives — including her parents Leonid and Valentyna, brother Sergii, sister-in-law Oleksandra, and aunt Antonina Morozenko — still in Ukraine.

And on Feb. 24, when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, life in her home country "changed tremendously," she said.

Kashchenko's brother Sergii acted quickly to move the rest of the family toward the western parts of the country, where they stayed with relatives before moving on to different countries in Europe — including Sweden and Romania — where they remain.

Meanwhile, Kashchenko and her husband Julian, a retired engineer, began trying to figure out the next steps.

"I realized we need a house," she said, since the home she and her husband have in Marathon can't accommodate the large family. "I wanted to find a place anywhere in Ontario ... where we can live all together and save some money."

"It will be absolutely unaffordable for us to rent three houses or rent three apartments."

That home is being provided by LaSalle resident Mary Lambros, who decided she needed to do something after watching news coverage of the war.

"I can't even imagine what these women and men had to do," she said. "And I just felt like there was something I could do."

Initially, Lambros said she planned to donate funds in support of the people of Ukraine, but decided she wanted to do more.

And then, she heard about an app that was connecting people from Ukraine with Canadian residents who could offer them a place to stay.

"I just kind of thought, well, I'll just send them an email, and that's kind of where it all started," Lambros said. "I never thought I was going to get contacted."