Donations being sought to fill plane from Edmonton to help those in Ukraine

Donations of new supplies for Ukraine are being collected at Edmonton's Polish Hall between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Monday and Wednesday this week.

A couple of former Alberta politicians have come together to collect donations of much-needed survival supplies to send a plane load of aid to Ukrainians in need.

Donations are being collected at Edmonton’s Polish Hall between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Monday and Wednesday this week. Organizers are gathering new, unused items like first aid supplies, pain medications, diapers and hygiene products (See more items below).

“Think about survival outdoors,” said organizer Thomas Lukaszuk. “Think about being stranded with nothing. What are your basic needs? The only thing we cannot take with us are liquids, so everything in dry form.”

Lukaszuk, a former cabinet minister and Alberta’s former deputy premier, has been watching the news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over the past several weeks. He realized he needed to do something to help.

“I came to the point where I could no longer watch without doing something about it,” Lukaszuk said Monday. “I think Canadians are starting to recognize the importance of this conflict, not only to Ukraine but frankly to the entire Western World.”

He said he phoned his friend and former premier Ed Stelmach, to coordinate a shipment of humanitarian aid.

“He pulled out his Rolodex, I pulled out mine and we started phoning businesses and governmental agencies, towns, municipalities to see what type of materials we could gather,” he said.

“We had a warehouse volunteered to us. And it turned out we were getting a whole bunch of life-saving equipment, surgical equipment, firefighting equipment, search and rescue equipment and our warehouse started to fill up really fast.