Worried Canadians can't contact family in Ukraine. A tour guide in B.C. is helping to track them down

As war in Ukraine makes contacting family there increasingly difficult, a travel agent in B.C. is using her connections to help Canadians get in touch with loved ones and confirm they're safe.

"The Canadian ones are desperate," said Myrna Arychuk, a tour guide with Ukrainian ancestry based in Chilliwack, B.C., who has spent 30 years helping Canadians trace their family history and visit long-lost relatives in Ukraine. 

"They want to know where they are. Are they in a bunker? Did they go to Poland? Do they have food? Are they safe? Do they need money?" she said.

These Canadian families might not have been in touch with their distant relatives for some years, and now find that old contact numbers no longer work.

For the last two weeks, Arychuk has been on the phone for hours every day, using her connections to track those relatives down. But when she does get them on the phone, they don't ask for money or material help, she said.

"The family in Ukraine is just so grateful. They cry when they think that their family has not forgotten them," Arychuk told The Current's Matt Galloway.

"It's emotional. I have to get off the phone and I have to take a minute."

The UN human rights office said Friday that it had confirmed 331 civilian deaths, with 675 people injured since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, though it added the real toll is likely much higher. At least one million people have been displaced.

Even before the war broke out last week, Arychuk was helping Canadians alarmed by growing tensions, including Muryl Geary, a retired family history researcher in Vancouver.

Geary grew up in Canada, but has cousins on her father's side in a small town about 100 kilometres south of Lviv. Arychuk organized Geary's first trip there, and she's visited five times over the years. 

Now in her late 80s, Geary hasn't seen them since 2002, but still checks in about once a year.

When the phone number for her cousins didn't work about a month ago, she contacted Arychuk, who called in the help of her long-time collaborator Ruslan Cholovskyy, a tour guide based in the city of Ternopil, western Ukraine.

"The next thing I knew, I got a message back that Ruslan had been to the village," said Geary, who published a book, Finding your Ukrainian Ancestors, in 2000 under her Ukrainian name Muryl Andrejciw.

"He had seen the family and they were OK, and he had a new phone number for me, which was really incredible," she told The Current.