How and why a father’s silence led his son to Ukraine
Khrystyna Kotsira, Serhiy Sivyakov, Halyna Zvarych
May 18, 2026
The Ukrainians Media
On March 19, 2026, a man and a woman were flying on the Toronto-Warsaw flight. Their final destination was Ukraine. They had not met before this flight. They were connected only by their city of origin, Oshawa, Canada, and the fact that both had never been to Ukraine. The man was flying to where his father was born. The woman, a native Canadian, was heading to her son, a volunteer in the Russian-Ukrainian war who was wounded at the front. From Warsaw, they got to Rzeszów. From there, they took a taxi to the border and crossed the border on foot. They arrived in Truskavets, where the Canadian volunteer was undergoing rehabilitation, at midnight. Here they said goodbye.
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Three steps on Ukrainian soil
“I used to say: I was born in Canada, I am a Canadian of Ukrainian origin, but when I took three steps on Ukrainian soil, everything changed: I am a Ukrainian of Canadian origin,” says 68-year-old Stefko Ostafiychuk.
It’s early spring in Kyiv, it’s still quite cold, but a man with glasses, a gray beard and gray hair — in a T-shirt and a light unbuttoned shirt. Shorts in his bag. “We’re from Canada” — he explains what it means: early Ukrainian spring for him is actually summer. On Stefko’s T-shirt, which is how he recommends it, is the inscription “WHERE ARE YOU?”. That’s the name of the platform he founded and from which the world can learn about Russia’s war crimes and about murdered and kidnapped Ukrainian children. The project was born after Russia dropped an aerial bomb on the Mariupol Drama Theater on March 16, 2022. In front of the building on the cobblestones there was an inscription in large letters — “CHILDREN” . Mariupol residents who were hiding in the theater hoped that this would stop the Russians. It didn’t work. According to various estimates, between 300 and 600 people died then.
Where are you?
“Where are YOU?” is also a personal nagging question that has tormented Stefko for many years. Sometimes it sounds in a different formulation: “What’s in the name Grigoriy?” That was the name of his older brother, who died in 2017. Only in adulthood did Stefko learn that he was named Grigoriy for a reason, but in honor of his father’s own brother, whom he never talked about. Why? What happened to Grigoriy, unknown to Stefko, who was his uncle? Will he be able to find out anything? Will he find traces of him in Ukraine?
The village of Trostyanets, Ivano-Frankivsk region. Stefko Ostafiychuk enters the yard where his father was once born. Next to the new house is an old clay house. With blue wooden windows, doors, and boards lined at the bottom. By the standards of the century before last, it is large and solid.
The house was built 125 years ago by Stefko’s grandfather, Vasyl Ostafiychuk. The current owners have been planning to demolish it for a long time. But they will never do it.
The Ostafiychuks lived here until 1941. Vasyl was a carpenter. He and Hanna had two sons, Mykola and Hryhoriy. Both studied at the Kolomyia Gymnasium. They were the first in the family to receive an education. Mykola worked at school for a while, then decided to become a doctor and went to study in Lviv. In 1939, Soviet troops occupied western Ukraine and repressions began. The Ostafiychuks were forced to flee. In 1941, they ended up in Germany. From there, they moved to Austria. Mykola knew German well and entered medical school in Innsbruck. The younger Hryhoriy has been lost.
In 1948, the Ostafiychuks received a residence permit in Canada and moved there. Mykola received a contract to provide medical care to Indians in tuberculosis hospitals and also served remote Indian settlements. At the university hospital, he met a girl, Jeanette Evelyn Thomson, a Canadian of French-British descent. She was a nurse. They got married.
Janet went with Mykola to Austria so he could complete his medical education. And there their first child was born. “His name has always been a mystery for as long as I can remember. My mother said that when she asked what we would call our son, my father hesitated a little, and then said, “Hryhoriy.” It took a long time for Mykola to tell Janette about his lost brother,” says Stefko.
Transition
Their next three children — Mykola, Stefko, and Lada — were born in Canada. The couple settled in Oshawa, a city on the shores of Lake Ontario. In the language of the Ojibe Indian tribe, the name of the city literally means “crossing to the other side of the lake or river.” At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 60 Ukrainian families here. When Mykola and Jeanette settled here, there were already several thousand Ukrainians: General Motors Canada opened a plant in Oshawa with 4,000 jobs and people were coming to work. The Ukrainian community became strong and one of the largest. In 1949, the Ukrainian Mykhailo Starchevsky-Stah became the city’s mayor.
Mykola Ostafiychuk has a private medical practice and operates in a local hospital. He is among the leaders of the Ukrainian community. Despite the fact that his wife is Canadian, their home is exclusively Ukrainian. Janette learned the language. And for the Ukrainian community she became Mrs. Ivanka. She heads various Ukrainian initiatives, for example, the Women’s League. She advocates for equal pay for women and men. Their children are taught the history and culture of Ukraine. They go to the Greek Catholic church, despite the fact that Janette is a believer in the Anglican Church. On December 25, they celebrate Canadian Christmas – with turkey on the table. January 6 – Ukrainian Christmas Eve with 12 Lenten dishes. They make
pysanka for Easter. In the summer, they go to Ukrainian camps. “I asked my mother why she learned Ukrainian, and she answered like this: when you love someone very much, you will learn their culture, language, and everything. My mother was left alone at the age of 20, so maybe that’s why she stuck by her father so much,” Lada Ostafiychuk reflects.
They are called the doctor’s children. But medical practice is not the only thing that interests Mykola Ostafiychuk. “My father was 15 when he and his grandfather planted a garden. When we were little, my father and mother bought 400 acres of land, and my father said, ‘I want to plant a garden because we had one at home.’ And on the farm in Canada, we planted over 600 trees. My father said, ‘I was born in the land, I want to die in the land,’” says Stefko.
That garden is practically the only memory of Ukraine their father shared with them. Now Stefko wonders why his father didn’t tell them anything, instead developing Ukrainian projects in Canada. Perhaps he felt guilty: he was able to get to safety, but his brother wasn’t. Survivor’s guilt.
When the working day at the medical office ended, patients came to the doctor’s home. Mykola did not refuse anyone. In the late 1960s, his parents settled a young woman in Stefka’s room. She worked in the office of Mykola Ostafiychuk, and at the same time the doctor took care of her health. The woman’s name was Lesya. She moved to Canada as a teenager in 1960. From Germany, where she was born. In 1959, her father was killed in Munich. Before his death, Lesya did not know her real name or who her father was. His death and the revealed secret of who he was hit her hard. The woman’s name was Lesya Bandera. “When I was young, Lesya Bandera occupied my room in Oshawa. She had PTSD. Because she was a child when her father was killed, but she didn’t know who her father was. She had an emotional breakdown. And the OUN leadership, acquaintances, asked my father to take care of Lesya. She lived with us for a year. She was wonderful, interesting,” says Stefko.
The Ostafiychuks knew the Banderas back in Ukraine. Stefko’s grandfather and grandmother were with priest Andriy Bandera, the father of the OUN leader. Many years after Lesya Bandera lived in his room, Stepan Bandera’s grandson, his full namesake, would help Stefko Ostafiychuk uncover the secret of Hryhoriy, his father’s brother.
The safe and happy life of the Ostafiychuk family will end in 1978. Son Mykola, who took care of the farm and garden, will die under the wheels of a car right near his house – a drunk neighbor will run over him. He will die in the arms of his brother Hryhoriy. Stefko is studying at the time. He will be informed by phone – his brother has died. On the way, he will think – which of the two.
Dark house
The death of his son will hit Mykola Ostafiychuk hard. Exactly one year later, he will die. As Stefko says, from a “heartbreaking” (heart attack, — ed.). “My brother died, then my dad. For me, it was like the lights went out. A dark house.”
At his father’s funeral, 21-year-old Stefko will sit next to his father’s friend, Petro Bashuk. And then a member of the OUN from the 1930s, a survivor of Auschwitz, will tell Stefko a story he
has never heard. That his father had a younger brother, Hryhoriy. He was a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and in 1941 he was probably shot by the Soviets.
Actually, that’s all the information. Stefko didn’t dig deeper – he was depressed by the deaths of his brother and father.
He moves to Toronto, becomes a successful international recruiter, looking for staff for global giants – technology developers. And completely breaks off relations with the Ukrainian community. Forgets the language. He is not even affected by the events of 1991.
How the great-grandson and great-great-grandson of Theodosius Vakhny decided to do what their predecessors feared – to live in Ukraine
Return
30 years pass. Stefko is invited to celebrate the anniversary of the Ukrainian Cultural Center “Dnipro”, which his father helped build. He comes to Oshawa. “We came for an anniversary, for a banquet. For me, it was like a feast. The young people were gone. And the old people remained — they could barely walk, could barely breathe. My friends told me: ‘We thought you were dead.’ We came, and instead of celebrating the anniversary, people started talking about selling the house. I said: we won’t sell. And they said to me: ‘Who are you to decide?’ I nodded at the wall — it was my father, there was his portrait. I told them: give me three weeks. I will decide what is the best option — whether to sell or keep it.”
He went to a Ukrainian conference in Toronto. To talk to the right people there and decide what to do with the Oshawa home. He sat in the hall and listened to a woman who was speaking passionately from the stage. During the break, she came up to introduce herself. “I told her: ‘My name is Stefko, and we’re getting married.’ A minute and a half after we met. Her mother headed Ukrainian organizations in Canada. She often traveled to Ukraine. The whole family took an active part in the diaspora. Later we found out that in 1970 I was at her house, we had a traveling camp. That is, our families knew each other once, but we didn’t know each other.”
Adriana, like him, was born in Canada. But, unlike Stefko, she was deeply immersed in Ukrainian initiatives. He, on the other hand, no longer spoke Ukrainian, and to this he heard from Adriana: “Aren’t you ashamed?” “She spoke only Ukrainian to me for five years. She told me: ‘Either learn Ukrainian again, or find another woman.’ My wife was a great nationalist, she drew me back to the community, where I had not been for over 30 years.”
This was also a kind of plus. Stefko looked at all the processes with a new, unbiased look. Then, in 2007, they decided not to sell the Ukrainian house. Stefko began to manage it and became involved in many Ukrainian projects. “I started with a project about the Holodomor. It was a project of the Ukrainian Research Institute in Toronto. We did a huge play about the Holodomor, spreading information.”
This project made him remember a Ukrainian woman who once worked in their home. She never talked about her past. She always wore a long-sleeved sweater, even in the heat, as if she was hiding something under it. And she made sure that they, the children, ate everything to the
crumb. When there was something left on the plate, she shouted: “Finish eating!” Only after her death did the Ostafiychuks learn: Mrs. Karpenko lost her husband and two children during the Holodomor.
Three dates
Stefko Ostafiychuk’s wedding ring has three dates engraved on it:
13.04.08. 10 AM — meeting time
07/31/10. — wedding day
“After six months, she went for a mammogram, and she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. We had just gotten married. We were supposed to go to Ukraine for six weeks for our honeymoon, but we had to change our plans. She asked: “Do you want a divorce?” I replied: no, I waited 50 years to find you.”
Adriana will bequeath to Stefka to take care of the Ukrainian projects dear to her – the Union of Ukrainian Youth and the “Rainbow” camp (the camp celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2024). The woman will die in his arms.
05.09.14. — the day of her death. Date three.
Stefko will quit his job and move to live on the territory of “Veselka”. The camp is already a bit run down. And the question is whether Canadian Ukrainians need it. Stefko lives alone on dozens of hectares. He is looking for funding for the camp, renovating the base, equipping a swimming pool, and building a rope park named after Adriana. In addition, he heads the “Dnipro” fund, where money was directed from the Ukrainian house in Oshawa, which was eventually sold. “We discussed what to do with the money. And many said: ‘My father helped build, I want the money.’ I said: that’s public. When we sell, we give the money to an organization that does Ukrainian projects. As a volunteer host, I was at the Veselka camp for five years. We gave millions of dollars to the camp, rebuilt many houses.”
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the fund has been financing the training of Ukrainian surgeons, supporting Ukrainian organizations working to return children from the occupation, paying for consultations with doctors and psychologists for refugees, and organizing rallies and flash mobs that remind the world of Russia’s crimes.
Stefko manages all this from Canada. He is not going to go to Ukraine: if he is not destined to go on a honeymoon with his wife, then there is no need. However, the question “Where are YOU?” or “What is in the name Grigoriy?” forces him to buy a plane ticket. At that moment, he already knows much more about his father’s brother than the scant information he heard at his father’s funeral. And all because he once shared bits of information about Grigoriy with his friend, with whom Ukrainian issues brought him together, the grandson of the OUN leader, Stepan Bandera. “Three hours later he calls me and says: ‘I have 900 pages of files about your uncle and 16 high school students who were destroyed by the NKVD.’ Now Stepan and I are writing a book about it. In English.”
Kolomyia Seventeen
Hryhoriy Ostafiychuk was born in 1922. He was three years younger than his brother Mykola. After school, he went to study at Kolomyia Gymnasium No. 2. In the tenth grade, he was recruited into the Ukrainian nationalist underground youth organization “Yunatstvo”.
Grigory — short, thin, red-haired. This is written in the NKVD file, which is currently stored in the archives of the SBU department in Ivano-Frankivsk region. It states that Ukrainian Grigory Ostafiychuk, a native of Trostyanets and a student of secondary school number 2, was arrested on January 17, 1941. Together with sixteen students and employees of the gymnasium. Investigator Sindyukov.
Hryhoriy was interrogated three times. During the first interrogation, he admitted that he had been recruited into the organization in January 1940, and named the names of the people. The last interrogation was on January 23. After that, Ostafiychuk pleaded guilty. He was listed in the case as the “leader of a counter-revolutionary group.” He was tried under Articles 54-2 and 54-11. Article 54-11 is participation in a counter-revolutionary organization, and Article 54-2 is armed rebellion against Soviet power.
— Do you plead guilty?
— I plead guilty to being a member of a counter-revolutionary, insurgent youth organization. Marchuk recruited me into the OUN organization. I received an assignment from him…
(From the interrogation protocol, January 23, 1941)
A trial was held in Stanislav on February 14. The suspects were given the right to have their “last word.”
Hryhoriy asked to “mitigate the punishment,” that is, not to sentence him to death. Most of the defendants asked for the same thing. But the judges sentenced him to be shot.
Five days later, Hryhoriy’s lawyer filed an appeal on his behalf and on behalf of two other members of the “Kolomiya Seventeen.” In the spring, the sentence was commuted to “ten years of imprisonment and five years of deprivation of rights with confiscation of property.” Actually, that’s all that is known from the case materials. What happened to Hryhoriy next can only be assumed.
Demyaniv Laz
In the fall of 1989, excavations began in the Demyaniv Laz tract on the outskirts of Ivano-Frankivsk. Three grave pits were discovered here, where 539 people were buried. Their bones were pierced by bayonets, and their skulls had holes from nails and bullets. According to the documents found, it was found that all of these people were shot by the NKVD in June 1941. Most of them were prisoners of Stanislavsk prison. The remains of only 22 of the dead were identified.
On September 18, 1939, the Red Army occupied Stanislav. A month later, they began arresting local teachers, priests, and intellectuals. Those who were caught in the last waves of arrests and
held in Stanislavsk prison did not have time to be sent to the Gulags – the German army was advancing. In the summer of 1941, Soviet troops began to retreat from Stanislavsk. The Soviets were covering up their tracks – political prisoners were killed right in their cells. According to various estimates, from 1,200 to 2,500 people died in Stanislavsk prison in June 1941. The remains of human bones found in Demyanov Laz indicate that most of those buried there were young people.
On March 20, 2026, Stefko Ostafiychuk arrived in Ivano-Frankivsk: “The nagging question — what does the name Grigoriy mean? — led me to my roots.”
Stefko visited Demyaniv Laz. No one knows whether the bones of his uncle Hryhoriy are among the 539 remains of the dead. But the probability is high. In June 1941, Hryhoriy Ostafiychuk, his father’s brother, whom he never spoke about, was only 19.
Demyaniv Laz is one of the places where those who died from the terrorist regime rest, which Stefko visited. He also visited the Field of Mars and the cemetery in the village of Trostyanets. Volodymyr Ostafiychuk is buried here. Perhaps a namesake or a distant relative.
“For 67 years, Ukraine was a concept for me, and now it is a reality. We went to the cemetery in Trostianets. There are three graves of defenders. And this is a reality. We were on the Field of Mars, one of our family members is buried there. Until now, it seemed to me that I had overcome the traumas that are passed down from generation to generation, but here it is as if my spacesuit has been ripped off — and this generational psychological trauma is exposed again.”
But now at least he knows what the name Hryhoriy means. And he will tell the world about his 19-year-old uncle, whom they “met” many years later.
The editorial staff of The Ukrainians Media expresses gratitude to the employees of the archive of the SBU department in Ivano-Frankivsk region and the employees of the Demyaniv Laz Memorial Complex for their assistance in preparing this material and verifying archival documents.