The following letter and poem was received by Bradford resident Walter Prokopchuk, a first-generation Canadian whose parents immigrated to the country from Ukraine.
Dear editor:
Thank you for your continued diligence and dedication in your efforts to deliver the local news to our community.
While growing up during the second half of the last century in the Holland Marsh, the bulk of our immediate community was populated with Ukrainians, Polish, Slovakian people – and of course, the Dutch a little further away.
We all played together, were taught in the same schools, competed against each other in sports – and, above all – we got along.
By now, you may know, or have guessed that my heritage is rooted in Ukraine. My Dad emigrated from there to here in the late 1920s to escape the ensuing Holodomor (The Great Famine) during that era. Mother’s parents arrived in Canada during the first decade of the 1900s to settle in Manitoba. Yes – I am a first-generation Canadian, through and through.
My composition compares the Russian invasion of the Ukraine to the pain that a cancerous disease inflicts.
I thank you for your time and indulgence, as we pull together in a collective effort to preserve peace and democracy.
Cancer – Of A Different Type
Now after watching one score years, our globe makes one admission:
Despite tumour had rooted self - disease been in remission.
But now the growth - metastasized - unleashes pain once more,
To fester mostly in Ukraine, but knocks on neighbours' doors,
Those organs, be the Georgian state, or Chechnya just before,
Had suffered from the symptoms with, the plaguing sores of war;
In Poland, France and Britain, where, three generations 'fore,
More recently in Hungary, Slovakia, and more.
And recent diagnosis reveals, the blight now tries to take root,
North of Ukraine, in Belarus, to enlarge tumour's crushing boot,
To smash strength of will afforded us: those freedoms our nations earned,
Through sacrifice - for we have learned: evil contemptibly spurns.
Now ask, "What is the antidote, why must all people toil;
While watching organs, all usurped, by cauldron's dragon - spoiled?"
So: Fathers, Brothers, all rise up, 'fore our whole planet weeps,
And Mothers - pledge to save your sons; 'cause the devil never sleeps.
Thus nations - ALL - embrace accord; and form a united pact;
For, Ukraine be just the first organ, cancer will kill. Please act.
