Finding their way: Ukrainian hairstylists make fresh start

For Yuliia Shyshkina and Nataliia Udovyehenko, who just started work at Eclipps Hair Café on New Westminster's Sixth Street, their new jobs mark the end of a long journey from their Ukrainian homeland..

The two hairstylists are among 190,000 Ukrainians who have immigrated to Canada in the last year after the Russian invasian in February 2022. Shyshkina was travelling in France as a theatre hairstylist when the war broke out. Finding she had become a refugee, she took up an invitation from a Ukrainian friend who had already settled in Maple Ridge.

She came to B.C. in June with about 2,000 euros on her.

“We all believed, ‘OK, two or three months and [the war] will be finished,’” she said. “And now it’s been a year and it’s not ended. I guess we all feel helpless and useless. But my point is, I want a better life for me and a better life for my family.”

Udovyehenko was also out of the country when war with Russia erupted. After landing a job as a hairstylist on a cruise ship, she was in Turkey when the war broke out. “I was lucky,” she said.

Udovyehenko said she was attracted to Canada’s political stability and the fact that it’s a land of immigrants. So far, she finds a smaller city like New Westminster more relaxed than the fast pace of big-city Kyiv.

While Shyshkina misses her family, her friends, and her dogs in Kyiv, she said she’s happy to have a fellow Ukrainian co-worker by her side.

“We support each other a lot, “she said. “She’s only been here a month, so I try to help her with what I know about the country.”

Udovyehenko said she believes the war in Ukraine is a representation of freedom against tyranny to the rest of the world. “It’s about a world-system, not just about Ukraine and Russia.”