Valeriy Kostiuk, Saskatchewan, Canada

In Ukraine, lived in a small village in the Poltava region. I worked as a tractor driver for a large farming operation called Nafkom Agro. I operated John Deere, Case, Massey Ferguson and New Holland tractors and later worked on many of them as an agricultural mechanic.

Since Ukraine has high unemployment, it was sometimes hard to provide food for my family. For this reason, I had been dreaming about working abroad for a very long time. I tried to go to the United States, but I was refused a visa. This is when a friend of mine told me about her experience with ILC. The Centre had found her work on a mushroom farm in England.

With this experience in mind and hoping for the best, I took my documents and submitted them to ILC. I included a reference from my employer, which told of my experience operating and repairing tractors. Sometime later I was invited to an interview with a Canadian employer who was looking to hire agricultural mechanics like me and with my type of expertise. From my interview, I was offered a job as a heavy-duty mechanic. From there, ILC handled all of the paperwork while I studied one month of English classes in their office prior to departure for Canada.

When I arrived to Canada, my employer met me at the airport and provided me with accommodations in Grenfell, SK. I was surprised that prices for food and clothes in Canada are similar to those in Ukraine, but the salaries are much higher. People in Saskatchewan, the province that I live in, are friendly.

I had a hard time at the beginning because I left my wife and three children in Ukraine. There are no Ukrainians in our town except for the workers on the farm. At first, the English language was hard for me because I didn’t have enough experience speaking it with others. Now, I have a lot of Canadian friends and I understand them very well.

Since the job that I am doing here is not new to me, because of the experience I had in Ukraine before arriving, I have not had any difficulties performing my work due to language barriers. At my workplace, we have an international team with workers from Germany, Slovakia, El Salvador and Ukraine. Even though we come from different cultures and have different first languages, we work together without difficulty.

Last year I obtained my Canadian Permanent Resident status. I like it here and I am used to the life here. In my opinion, life is better here than at my home in Ukraine. My wife came to Canada several months ago and she doesn’t want to go home either. My employermy wife a job on the farm and so that is where she currently works. Sometimes we go fishing with our friends. We are planning to bring our younger son to Canada in April and our daughter and older son at a later date offered.

I think it is easier for young people to go to a new country and start everything from the beginning. There are a couple of things that I would recommend for those who want to work in Canada. First, be honest with your prospective employer and tell them only what you really can do. Second, and more important, you have to be good at the job you are hired to do.