Every weekend for most of her youth, while other children were out playing, Natalia Toroshenko attended Ukrainian school, studying the country’s geography, language, its history and national heroes.
“Ukraine, and being Ukrainian, is a deep part of me,” she said. “I wasn’t born there, but it’s my ancestral homeland.”
Toroshenko grew up in Montreal, thousands of kilometres away from the country her father had left to flee famine and conflict. But, she like many other Ukrainian Canadians, has maintained strong connections to the country – and watched horrified as family and friends are trapped in war.
