“My story, how I ended up here in Ottawa and in Centretown. When I moved from Ukraine to Canada, I moved to St Catharines, ON. and I stayed there for three months. When my program in St. Catharines was done, I decided to move to Ottawa. I’ve heard a lot that Ottawa is very boring and it’s a very government city, but I still wanted to move there. For me it felt like this is the city for me to move to. My best-friend from Ukraine, she also lives here, so that’s how I ended up in Ottawa. When I moved to Ottawa, I was actually very happy that I moved into the Centretown area, as everything else is walkable and, a lot of green space and is very calm. A place that is very memorable for me in Ottawa is North Navy restaurant. I was studying at the Ukrainian University, and I was finishing my degree online here in Canada, in Ottawa.
It was very hard, because it was a 7-hour difference, so at 3 a.m. in the morning I would have exams. And my friends and I, who also graduated from the Ukrainian University, we went to the North Navy for our graduation, because we didn’t get to have a graduation in Ukraine. And we created our own little celebration in that cute spot. For us it seemed very cute, it’s an old house, and the food there is delicious. And you were asking how different it is from Ukraine. It’s very different. I definitely had a culture shock. How people live their life, and why is everything closed after 4 p.m. and no coffee shops are open? But going out more and learning more about the place, I found my own spots here. And it definitely, like I said, helped me feel connected to the community, which is very important as an immigrant. You can feel that you’re lonely and by yourself here, but this is not true. As long as you start going to those events, you find similar people, similar faces, and then it’s as easy as just to say hello, and then the conversation just flows. So I felt very connected to the community here.”
Marichka Bokovnia @bokovnia_marichka
