in Chatsworth, Grey Highlands, Southgate, West Grey
February 26, 2024
BY JOHN BUTLER — Tragedy and travesty overseas can bring faraway people together for common cause. Such are the friendships and alliances forged by Heiner Phillip of Flesherton with three Estonian men, and a host of Ukrainians and their supporters, to help Ukraine deal with Russian invasion.
Heiner who runs an engineering practice, is also the founder and President of the internet service provider Rural Net. From the very beginning of the Russian invasion, Heiner and his activist wife Susanne von Toerne have been involved in supporting the Ukrainian people. Heiner & Susanne had donated a proportion of their income for several months to help Ukrainian families who wanted to seek refuge in Canada for the war’s duration, and longer if necessary. Susanne is one of the driving forces behind Grey County Cares, an organization chaired by Lynn Silverton and founded by local playwright and bookshop proprietor Kevin Land to help provide a refuge here for refugees from Ukraine and other countries in turmoil. Heiner’s and Susanne’s efforts, coupled with the fundraising and disbursement activities of Grey County Cares, helped a dozen Ukrainian families to get to Canada from Ukraine and to settle in Grey, at first with host families and then on their own. Susanne herself drove a vanload of Ukrainians from a Polish transit camp to a temporary haven in Germany, then helped them travel to Canada and settle here.
But for Heiner, helping Ukrainians to defend their own country became a priority too. He became the de facto informal leader of a group of almost a hundred like-minded people from across the world, many with specialized skills to offer, who are committed to helping Ukraine obtain the supplies they need to fight on into the third year of a war the Russians were touted to win within the first few weeks. Drawing on his engineering skills, Heiner designs the five kinds of drones used by the Ukrainian military. Based on his designs, the drones are manufactured in Ukraine. In 2023 Heiner obtained a very high-tech sniper’s scope, so valuable and needed so urgently that Heiner delivered it personally to one of the Ukrainian army’s top snipers — a man whose younger brother is one of the Ukrainians currently in Canada thanks to Grey County Cares.
In mid-February, Heiner and Susanne hosted a meeting in Flesherton with three young Estonians who have also made it their mission to help Ukraine. The three are on a North American tour to raise the profile of Ukraine’s plight and to raise money for military supplies at a time when some governments have been slow in providing what Ukraine needs to remain free.
The leader of this three-man group is 27-year-old Artur Rehi, a veteran of military service in Estonia. Artur points out that people from Estonia and the two other Baltic republics (Latvia and Lithuania) have a strong affinity with the Ukrainian cause because their countries, like Ukraine, were subjected to oppression when they were part of the Soviet Union. Artur vividly recalls his own grandfather’s exile to Siberia for many years. He also points out that if Russia succeeds in dominating Ukraine, his own country may be next in Russia’s crosshairs.
Before visiting Flesherton to confer with Heiner, Artur and his Estonian colleagues Jasper Ristkok (a Ph.D. student) and Kristjan Pint (who develops computer codes) met with federal politicians in Ottawa, visited the embassies of the Baltic republics and attended demonstrations in front of the Russian embassy. Artur himself is an actor and videographer who now devotes himself almost full time to posting material on YouTube about the war in Ukraine — his YouTube channel has more than 675,000 followers. After Flesherton, Minneapolis was next on their itinerary where they visited a factory making prosthetic limbs for Ukrainian war amputees. Salt Lake City and New York, where they met with supporters, rounded out their itinerary.
Artur and his team have taken part in five convoys to deliver supplies to Ukraine, bringing them into repeated direct contact with front line Ukrainian soldiers. It is these soldiers rather than Artur who determine what supplies are needed. Artur then raises funds to provide those supplies. At present, says Artur, trucks and drones are needed most, along with equipment to jam signals to Russian drones.
While Artur’s group deals primarily with the military in Ukraine, he points out that the entire Ukrainian nation is mobilized to repel the Russians, despite what he calls the “multigenerational ripples of suffering” in their country. He says that two years of war, curfews and shortages have not dampened Ukrainians’ resolve any more than Luftwaffe bombing destroyed the spirits of Britons during the Second World War.
Heiner and Susanne here in Grey Highlands heartily endorse the fundraising efforts of their Estonian colleagues, and encourage potential donors to contact Artur directly at rehiartur@gmail.com to arrange a donation. Heiner says that in the last two weeks, library workers and band members of military bases have now been sent to the front lines in Ukraine. “The soldiers that are dying now are last week’s civilians” he says.
Neither Heiner nor Susanne like war, yet they feel compelled to help Ukraine survive the relentless attack on its territory. They are planning to visit Europe soon to deliver a truck to Ukraine. They are heartened too by the support for Ukraine found elsewhere in the community. One Rural Net employee, for instance, is one of four members of his church who spent five days in Ukraine helping construct a church in 2023. He returned home with a deep appreciation for the industriousness and high morale of the Ukrainians he met. Heiner also gives credit to Alex Ruff, Member of Parliament for Bruce-Grey Owen Sound, and his parliamentary and constituency staff for their unfailing support for the Ukrainian cause and for the wellbeing of Ukrainian newcomers in Grey and Bruce counties.
Susanne stresses the importance that she hopes the community will continue to place on Ukrainian newcomers to Grey and Bruce, and those families that may come in future. She says those who are already here came to Canada under a special visa program that lets them stay for up to three years. Many of them, she says, have grown roots here and are contributing to the wellbeing of Canada, but with no assurance from the federal government that they will be allowed to stay beyond the three-year limit. Anyone wanting to know how to help these newcomers can contact Susanne at sanne.vt@hotmail.de .
Susanne and Heiner have not limited their interest in international wellbeing to Ukraine alone. Several years ago, Heiner provided solar panels to a rural community of descendants of slaves in Ecuador, and Susanne, a surgeon by background, has provided medical services in refugee camps overseas.
Why do they do it? For Heiner, it’s simple. “It’s the right thing to do, and we can help — so it’s our responsibility to help” he says.
And as Susanne puts it, “They are not far away. They are us.”
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