Writer Paul Terefenko and his Ukrainian friend, Max, visit Toronto's High Park, where they first met on a day of summer fishing at Grenadier Pond.Yader Guzman/The Globe and Mail
Paul Terefenko is a writer and photographer based in Toronto.
When I took up fishing last summer, I didn’t actually care about catching a fish. And I definitely didn’t want to eat anything from High Park’s Grenadier Pond, a short walk from my apartment. But the idea of just sitting in one spot for a few hours, left alone, away from the world, was incredibly appealing. It didn’t matter that I had no idea what I was doing.
On my second trip to the pond I found a spot in the southeast corner, far away from the high-traffic areas of the park, a tiny clearing between the tall reeds with enough room for a couple of people to cast. There was already a man fishing there when I arrived, and he was equipped with specialized fishing paraphernalia typically absent along the Grenadier’s shoreline: tiny pliers, line scissors, perfectly organized little lure boxes all at the ready. Here was someone I could ask for advice.
“You have the wrong hook, you’re using bait that’s too big, and your line is too heavy for your rod,” he explained without a whiff of annoyance. He then showed me his rig, with which he’d caught a bass not long before. “I brought this plastic bait with me from my home country. I don’t know where you can get them here, yet, but they will work.” Instead of ending it there, he reached into his fishing fanny pack and helped me get set up on one of his lures – mysterious, squirmy little plastic fish and special hooks that would help with avoiding reeling in the weeds, a thing I was exceedingly good at doing.
I got a few nibbles within minutes. As it was my second time out, this was already a huge step forward. It was incredible, honestly, and since I wasn’t good enough to catch anything, I didn’t actually have to deal with the stress of having to remove a hook from a flopping fish.
It was clear this guy was the best fisherman here today. Why squander his unobtainable lures here when he could be fishing any number of nearby lakes global anglers can only dream of accessing?
“It’s close to the subway, I don’t have a car and I can’t work yet,” he said, then told me that he had just moved to Toronto from Ukraine – specifically from the suburbs of Kyiv that received a disproportionate amount of attention after discoveries of mass killings and countless other atrocities perpetrated after Russia’s invasion.
I continued the conversation in Ukrainian – mine, rusty as it’s ever been thanks to only occasional use at family functions. A smile crept across the man’s face at the long-shot odds of running into someone able to speak his native tongue. I explained how common it was for Ukrainian diaspora kids to lose prime Saturday morning cartoon hours to get a full suite of lessons on Ukraine’s history, art, geography and literature in vacant elementary schools. It was a cultural survival tactic against a centuries-long Russian effort to erase Ukraine’s identity. In what amounts to geopolitical gaslighting, Russia, then and now, paints Ukraine as a misguided brotherly nation without a unique identity.
His smile might also have had something to do with a peculiar way I have of speaking my ancestral language that leans heavily on a mid-20th-century vocabulary out of place with the modern Ukrainian tongue. It often brings out a chuckle for either being the language of a grandparent or for simply being mind-blowingly weird to hear coming from some dude in a ragged heavy-metal T-shirt 7,500 kilometres away from your homeland.
He introduced himself as Max – Maksym, back home – and went on to outline how he’d ended up in Toronto three months before.
Pro-Russian forces storm a government building in Donetsk in April, 2014, to unfurl the flag of a self-declared republic.Reuters
“The war began in 2014 for me,” he started. “I was a surgeon in Donetsk.” I winced knowing exactly what that meant. That Ukrainian city was seized by Russian irregular forces almost 10 years ago after a feeble attempt to convince the world that two peaceful Ukrainian provinces were actually legitimate breakaway statelets. Russian-installed puppet leaders, straight from thug central casting, organized sham elections in the unrecognized Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in an attempt to give Russia an excuse to invade – fomenting conflict there as part of an imperialist war. “Some of my friends simply moved to Russia and we don’t speak. Others moved to other parts of Ukraine.”
Max (I’m not using his last name as he still has family in Russian-occupied areas of the country) resettled in Kyiv.
“The capital offered the widest range of opportunities,” he told me. “And I was looking forward to seeing more friends there. I had especially been looking forward to seeing my band,” he added. “Did I tell you I played bass? All my dudes were in Kyiv.” The day the 2022 invasion began, he grabbed his “contingency suitcase” and relocated to his in-laws’ home in Vorzel’ – directly adjacent to Bucha and Irpin, and southwest of the Hostomel airport.
“Little did I know Russians would attack Kyiv from the north. … I expected they would strike from the east,” he went on, echoing a sentiment in Ukraine that Russia wouldn’t attempt an invasion of the capital.
Within hours Vorzel’ was overrun by Russian soldiers. It was targeted on Day 1 by airborne forces – likely because of its proximity to a cargo airport.
“Russian troops landed on the highway along which my hospital was situated,” Max said. He managed to get his kid to stay with relatives in Western Ukraine, but his in-laws had declined to go. “We had no information about my spouse’s parents for 10 days.” Eventually they escaped, though it’s a miracle anyone did.
These peaceful upper-middle-class suburbs – to Kyiv what Vaughan is to Toronto, or Pointe-Claire to Montreal, or Delta to Vancouver – provided some of the first evidence of the craven destruction left in the wake of fleeing Russians. Towns such as Bucha and Irpin and Vorzel’ became a window onto the scale of animosity Russia had for Ukraine and a first stop for foreign diplomats to tour and digest the monstrousness of the attacks. It was doubly tragic that Max had moved there from the more volatile east to have a safe place to work and raise a family, only to have the war follow.
Destroyed Russian tanks lie in Bucha last April, after Ukrainian troops retook the area.Felipe Dana/The Associated Press
Once his family was out of (relative) danger, Max considered his next step. “I visited a military registration office. They took my information and told me they didn’t need me at that moment, but would call if they did,” he said. In the meantime he weighed his options. He had a sister-in-law in the United States helping his in-laws from Vorzel’ immigrate there, although visas to the U.S. were hard to come by. But he learned Canada had launched a special residence pathway to those fleeing the invasion.
“We considered the pros and cons and decided to ensure our child had a better and safer future in Canada, with it being one of the safest countries in the world – even though I knew I couldn’t work as a surgeon here,” Max told me.
On that first day we met he was mulling career options out loud: “I could drive an Uber, I think, but first I need to get a licence … and a car.” He thought getting certification as an anesthesiology tech wouldn’t be difficult, but he could also just save up and complete the exams that would allow him to work in medicine here.
I could see why someone facing decisions like this would make time to just fish, and I felt guilty probing him about his story. When we’d first met he’d often switch back to English from Ukrainian, and I wondered why. I assumed it was easier to distance oneself from the circumstances of finding oneself in a foreign country by thinking in the local language – there’s only so much you want to look back on when looking back hurts. But then another reason dawned on me: I was an opportunity to practise. I could be a shaming-free Duolingo owl ironing out quirky exceptions to grammar rules or decoding idioms, with the bonus of being able to sidebar in Ukrainian if needed.
So we made a deal: He would teach me how to fish, and I’d help him learn English.
Artwork by the street artist Tvboy adorns the bullet-damaged walls of the House of Culture in Irpin, one of the Kyiv suburbs adjoining Max's old neighbourhood of Vorzel.Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters
If I go back far enough, my family also ended up in Canada because of a war.
My grandparents, all four of whom were Ukrainian, suffered during the Second World War like many Ukrainians: caught between the threat of domination by either Nazis or Soviets.
My paternal grandparents lost everything when they were forced to resettle, leaving the land they’d lived on – now part of Poland thanks to the new division of lands after the war – for formerly German Danzig (now Gdansk) in the north.
My maternal grandfather met my grandmother in Vienna, where he’d been taken as an Ostarbeiter, a slave labourer – a classification slightly above “exterminate” on Nazi human-desirability scales. The Red Army was advancing on the city, so they escaped on foot to Bavaria, where they wound up in a displaced-persons camp run by Americans. But when the camp fell under Soviet control, they were herded onto trains as part of postwar repatriation. On their train, word spread it was headed to Kazakhstan or Siberia – so they bailed, ending up in Poland, which actually worked out okay, considering the isolation and living conditions for those who were forcibly resettled in those distant places. And for about 50 years they lived more or less happily in Gdansk, refusing every offer to live in Canada, finally passing peacefully in a retirement home for Polish Ukrainians.
It’s spooky thinking about these family-shattering stories from the Second World War because we’re seeing them play out again today.
Hundreds of thousands of people are being press-ganged into cannon-fodder service by Russians. In what Ukrainian government officials have called a war crime, millions of their citizens, including children, have been taken from Russian-occupied areas and sent to Russia, a country led by a man obsessed with the nation’s imperial glory days. That could have been my family’s fate, I’ve thought many times, if we hadn’t wound up in Poland.
It’s been heartening watching Poland reject Russian influence – Vladimir Putin’s Russkiy Mir, a discount-store Pax Romana fantasy used as cover to destabilize and conquer neighbouring nations. The country where I was born has played a leading, and heroic, role in helping many of the millions of Ukrainians displaced by the war, and by keeping the flow of critical supplies, from military to humanitarian, entering Ukraine. It’s impossible to miss the gratitude Ukrainians feel towards neighbouring Poles.
In the early 1980s, Poland began to more openly resist the yoke of communism. By 1981, the Solidarity movement was burgeoning, and my dad decided that if the Soviets invaded to quell the movement – as they had in Hungary in 1956 and Prague in 1968 – life would become a lot worse.
The way he saw it, Poland was fine, but why not live somewhere less volatile? Canada was the obvious choice. Ukrainians had already made new homes for themselves across the Prairies from the 1880s onward. Lured by promises of arable land (once you managed to turn forests into farmland), they built communities of cantilevered support – from banks to schools, to social services and clubs – all geared toward making the transition more manageable and also building a template for immigration-fuelled prosperity in this country.
And so I ended up here, my extended family splintered: grandparents six time zones away, cousins I’ve never met in Ukraine, others in Germany, others still in South America and the U.S. It was only in the age of social media, seeing so many friends’ holiday feeds filled with extended family, that it hit home how much I’d missed out on with mine. That strain on, and separation of, families is what so many currently displaced Ukrainians are being set up for – the stuff outside of direct traumas of wartime loss. The milder isolation. The language barrier that makes people squint at you while you work out words in an alphabet nothing like your native one.
As a preschooler the above hit really hard in one of the first vivid early childhood memories I have: trying to go to the washroom at my brand-new daycare in a part of town I had already declared to my mom couldn’t be Toronto because it had no towers. My exchange with the daycare employee staring at me as I tried to say I needed to go pee really stuck.
In addition to seeing a horse and meeting three people dressed as the Hostess potato-chip goblins, that is the sum total of formative memories I have from daycare. As a result I’m afraid of horses, I’ll eat any potato chip put in front of me, and I won’t let myself be hobbled by a language barrier.
Max fishes on the Otonabee River, a tributary of Rice Lake, east of Toronto. For Max, the fishing trips are a chance to practice English, a language he finds challenging because 'spellings don't make sense and you use the same word for so many things sometimes.'Courtesy of Paul Terefenko
“What’s that word you said last time?” Max asked me before we met up for another round of him watching me fail to catch a fish.
“Serendipity,” I said. “It means finding something valuable without looking for it – in an unlikely place. That’s what happened to us. … We came to fish, but left as friends.”
We now tried to speak exclusively in English when we met on the banks of Grenadier Pond, where his English continued to improve and my fishing attempts continued to flounder.
“English is a difficult language. Spellings don’t make sense and you use the same word for so many things sometimes,” Max said one afternoon. “Sew is pronounced ‘so,’ but ‘sue’ is not. Sowing you do in fields.” I pointed out that a sow, pronounced entirely differently, is a mother pig. He just laughed.
Our next time out, Max landed a decent-sized fish I’d never seen. It wasn’t a perch, bluegill or bullhead. “I don’t know what this is,” Max said. I felt like I was failing my half of our deal when a group of boys ran over. “It’s a crappie,” one yelled. We both accepted it as a crappie – another one of those confusing English words with too many meanings.
The kids immediately grilled Max on what bait he was using and he made sure they got to try some of his lures, too. It awed me to see this small but human moment: giving what you have, while at home a neighbour is trying to steal everything from you.
A few weeks later Max and I drove to Rice Lake, a couple hours northeast of Toronto. It was extremely late in the season, but still mild, so we figured why not try it. In the car Max took a call from his parents, who were still in Ukraine. Speaking to them in Ukrainian, he caught up with the latest news, but mostly wanted to talk about a large battery he’d bought for them.
“They need to have it to power basic things, but it’s not working,” he told me after hanging up. “It’s not a normal battery, but one big enough to power critical appliances if power is knocked out.” He was certain it was a small hiccup and the backup power would eventually work. It sounded no different than when I try to help my parents navigate their cellphones: matter-of-fact troubleshooting, except in his case the whole problem stems from Russia targeting civilians – shooting at power stations and non-military targets in an attempt to demoralize the population.
It’s hard to see, from my tiny window into it, how this kind of population can be demoralized.
When I did my daily scan of Russian-invasion-related Twitter accounts (which I’d cultivated over eight-plus years, sadly) I saw a Ukraine fighting and resisting, not on the back foot, but a nation that’s pursuing the kind of life we have here in Canada – war-free and prosperous. None of that is a given. Tactics change, interest wanes, and as we approach the one-year mark of a war that Russia hoped to win in mere days, everything points to Vladimir Putin attempting an invasion do-over.
Ukraine relies on the democratic world to see the country’s steadfast defence of not just itself, but also of a Europe that has grown comfy in its post-Cold War life.
It’s also critical not to forget that the simple act of being “Ukrainian” can’t be abided by Russia – they need to subjugate these people and have been actively trying to do so for too many generations. Having this cycle stop in the 21st century could be a real turning point for millions of innocent people and make talk of ceding lands a non-starter.
Max shows off one of his catches at Centreville on the Toronto Islands.Courtesy of Paul Terefenko
Before the cold weather arrived we made one more plan: a trip to the Toronto Islands. It was an absolutely perfect day – we rode the ferry and I looked out at Toronto’s late-fall shoreline. There was an ad early in the war that used CGI to show Western cities being bombed to the degree Ukrainian ones have been. It’s an ad that’s stuck with me. We really are lucky to have what we do.
On this final trip of 2022, Max, predictably, landed a huge, beautiful pike, and I caught nothing. He shared that he decided to write medical exams – with the goal of being able to work as a general-practice physician. To him, the choice to be a GP is a practical one.
“Last year, only three foreigners were able to start their general-surgery residency in all of Canada,” he explained. “Even if I succeed, it would take at least 6½ years of residency to become a general surgeon here. I simply cannot afford it.” By pursuing general practice he’ll be happy knowing he didn’t give up on medicine and have to live with that regret.
With the sun setting on that chilly evening I brewed up some tea on a little camping stove. “This is called steeping. It’s spelled the same way as you’d write ‘steep slope,’ just to make it more confusing. I actually don’t know why tea brewing is called that,” I told Max, eliciting a knowing nod to another absurd Englishism.
As we shuffled off the Ward’s Island Ferry, I asked him if he’s ever tried ice fishing. “I haven’t,” he said. It seemed like the perfect next step.
As of early February we’ve still not gone, but that’s thanks to an abnormally mild winter. Neither of us has complained, as the same mild winter has so far helped Europe endure Russia’s withholding of gas exports and their bombing of energy infrastructure.
Besides that, Max has been in the thick of studying. His first exam takes place the week I’m writing these words. Fishing can wait just a little bit longer.
War in Ukraine: More from The Globe and Mail
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