Artist to Sarnia

Nataliya (Natasha) Nikolenko told Ed Dickson before the war in Ukraine began that she would someday come to Canada.

That seemed unlikely to Dickson, the overseas co-ordinator with the Chatham-based humanitarian organization, Loads of Love, which has been working in Ukraine for many years, including at the orphanage where Nikolenko was raised.

“I said, ‘Natasha, that’s really great that you’re so positive and so optimistic but it’s really almost impossible,’” Dickson said he recalls telling her.

Born without use of her arms and legs, Nikolenko was abandoned by her parents as an infant. After creating a life for herself in Ukraine as an artist who holds paint brushes in her mouth, Russia’s invasion of her homeland resulted in her prediction coming true.

Nikolenko, 36, and her caregiver, Anya Kozub, arrived in Sarnia in mid-April from Romania, where they had initially fled. They are now living in a Wellington Flats apartment donated by Vision Nursing and Rest Home. The two are being assisted by Bethel Pentecostal Church as part of its effort to help settle refugees from Ukraine.

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