By Mark Nonkes
There are people we meet who have a wonderful ability to respond and act in moments when most of us feel stunned and helpless.
Iuliia Dovzhenko is one of those people.
The 34-year-old from Goderich-area has led a grassroots response to the Ukraine-Russia war for the past three and a half years. She’s opened her home, making her family’s chicken farm a haven for Ukrainian newcomers to land and begin rebuilding their lives. She’s the driving force behind community gatherings and donation drives.
This mom-of-three says her tireless volunteerism is a way she can act locally to respond to what’s happening back at home. When the war started in 2022, Dovzhenko remembers wishing she could hop on a flight and pluck her mom, sister and her sister’s children from the country.
“I was sad and scared and angry, and I couldn’t help them,” she remembers.
Dovzhenko arrived in North America some six years earlier, a freshly graduated veterinarian from small-town Ukraine.
Prior to her arrival, Dovzhenko worked for a government-funded veterinary clinic, travelling to farms and treating cows, sheep and pigs.
“Surgeries were my passion. This was when everything was quiet, when you had to be patient and so delicate. That was my favourite thing to do,” she says.
As a 20-something in search of adventure, Dovzhenko put her veterinarian career on hold and decided to work abroad with a friend for a year. She arrived in Iowa, to work on a pig farm with 6,000 animals.
There, on her birthday, in the only bar in Davis City, Dovzhenko met Bill Geisel. From southwestern Ontario, he too was on a work visa in the U.S.
It turns out they were both driven, independent, adventurous people and they hit it off. They began to date, and when Dovzhenko’s work took her to the next state, Geisel still made the six hour drive every weekend to see her. When Dovzhenko’s work term came to an end, Geisel proposed and the two got married at a little white chapel in Las Vegas. One of her friends gifted them tickets to jump from the highest hotel in Vegas.
And so they took a big leap together.
Fast forward a few years. They were living in Huron County; Geisel manages for Mari VanderVeeken and invested interest with him to get into poultry. He cleaned up an old two-story barn that had been used for storage and retrofitted it with all the technology of a modern broiler barn.
Three years ago, he modified the doors to make both storeys compatible with modular loading. He runs 10,000 birds on each floor and ships each flock twice, taking about 30 per cent of them at 1.8 kilos for the BBQ market and then finishing up the rest nine days later at 2.8 kilos.
“It is more work this way,” says Geisel, “but it makes the most of the space.” In any case, it is clear he doesn’t shy away from work. He manages three other barns for VanderVeeken on top of the fieldwork and the elevator.
Geisel grew up near Wallenstein and while his parents didn’t farm, it was always clear that farming was in his blood. He remembers catching chickens as a young teenager, and he sold pigs. He got into pig farming in a big way, working for Cham Enterprises for seven years before he was offered the opportunity to manage a 6,000-sow start-up in Missouri.
Just a few kilometres down the road, there was a bar in Davis City Iowa ... but you know what happened next.
Geisel visited Ukraine twice with Dovzhenko before the war broke out and he was impressed with the huge fields and great production.
“They don’t have houses on their farms,” he explains. The houses are in gated villages, still left over from the Soviet regime. And while there is a lot of foreign production there, foreigners can’t own land in Ukraine. They can only buy and sell leases on the land.
But, back in Ontario, the couple soon had two daughters (and recently a son as well). Dovzhenko was adapting to life in Canada, finding her niche in a new career as a fitness instructor at the local YMCA and as a mom.
She loves rural living and couldn’t imagine living in a big city. She and Geisel love that their children run around the farm without shoes on.
Everything changed when the war broke out.
“I took action locally because it was something that I needed to do to help,” she says.
In a simple Facebook post, Dovzhenko wrote that she was hoping to help the Ukrainian war effort by collecting donated items to send back to Ukraine. She hoped to fill her mini-van and drive it to London, Ontario to the Ukrainian Congress Centre, where it would be sent to Ukraine.
“The power of social media is amazing,” Dovzhenko says.
The outpouring of support from Goderich and area residents was overwhelming.
The response led to a three-month collection effort that filled a transport trailer with clothing, medicine, food and other essential supplies, along with a U-haul truck being filled with wheelchairs, walkers and crutches for the war effort. In addition, many more boxes of clothing were brought to the Salvation Army in Goderich.
After the trucks were packed, Dovzhenko turned her attention to bringing Ukrainians fleeing war to Canada. A new program for people escaping the crisis was set up by the Canadian government, offering a three-year open work permit to Ukrainians.
Now, here’s where I become part of the story. When I’m not writing, I manage Huron County’s Immigration Partnership – a federally-funded program designed to build community support to welcome newcomers to Canada. I met Dovzhenko as she worked alongside retired architect Roman Turcyzn, during a meeting where we spoke about the possibility of bringing Ukrainians fleeing the war to Huron County. I was immediately impressed with her steely determination to act and drawn in by her sarcastic sense of humour.
Over the course of several meetings, Dovzhenko, Turczyn and I, along with others, discussed how we could set up an approach to provide safe places for Ukrainians to arrive in Huron County and rebuild their lives.
First, Turczyn and Dovzhenko arranged for a mother and her adult son fleeing Ukraine’s war to settle in Goderich in the summer of 2022. They found a host for the family to stay with, a job for both and rides to get them to and from appointments. Soon thereafter, a family of four arrived from Ukraine, followed by a family of six. The process of helping the newcomers settle was repeated.
At the same time, Dovzhenko responded to personal requests on her social media page from friends and family and offered them information about how to come to Canada.
Together with the Goderich Lions and the Huron County Immigration Partnership, Dovzhenko and Turczyn organized a community gathering in August 2022 at Camp Klahanie, just south of Goderich, to bring Ukrainian newcomers together. The event drew 85 attendees – with newcomers from Goderich, Wingham and Exeter meeting for the first time. The gathering led to a series of monthly potlucks held in a church basement, leading to friendships forming and key information about the community being shared.
In early 2023, Dovzhenko’s mother arrived and began living with the family. In 2024, Dovzhenko’s sister and two children arrived too.
In total, Dovzhenko directly helped 16 Ukrainians come to Canada, hosting them in her own home after they arrived, helping them find work and getting their children in school.
In addition, she’s helped dozens more people as she settled in Huron County. She’s acted as interpreter, driver, apartment hunter, conflict negotiator, service referrer, event coordinator, information provider for the past three and a half years and continues to do so.
For those voluntary efforts, Dovzhenko is being recognized in the 2025 I Am Huron campaign, a celebration of immigrants making an impact in their communities. She is among six other recipients.
Geisel is proud of his wife, her determination and compassion for people. When they took the leap, he couldn’t have dreamed the adventure their life would become.
When asked about advice she would have for other immigrants, Dovzhenko underlines the importance of making connections.
“This is a wonderful place with wonderful people. Just start talking. If you need help, ask for help. If someone is asking for help, help,” she recommends. ◊
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Mark Nonkes is a writer and manager of Huron County Immigration Partnership.