Tapping into community connections

A new online directory brings together Ukrainian-owned businesses and service providers in Winnipeg.

The brainchild of Mila Shykota, a provincial government worker who immigrated to Winnipeg in 2022 after Russia invaded her native Ukraine, the directory features 138 businesses — a number she says she adds to every day.

“I came up with the idea a year ago, when I initiated a project at work celebrating our diversity, since our team is very multicultural,” Shykota said on Friday.

She invited co-workers to represent their own country in some way, be it cuisine, culture or heritage. She said when she was preparing her own presentation, she decided to collect data on all of the Ukrainian restaurants and souvenir boutiques in Winnipeg so her colleagues could experience her culture.

An idea was born, and on Feb. 1, the online Ukrainian Guide to Winnipeg went live. (The project also runs Facebook and Instagram pages of the same name that highlight community life. A link to the guide’s website, which isn’t searchable on Google yet, can be found on both social media accounts.)

Anna Bieliaha, a real estate agent at Real Brokers, is on the list.

She says among many Ukrainian groups in Winnipeg, the same questions often come up.

“Can you recommend me a pedicure? Can you recommend me a hair stylist? Can you recommend a realtor?” she said.

The platform lists 138 businesses in 28 categories, including home improvement, restaurants and cafés, beauty services, handicrafts, homemade food, real estate, automotive services, health care, photography and more. Users can search for services using keywords.

Each business has a profile page that includes contact information, photos, maps, social media links, tags and customer reviews. The descriptions are written in both English and Ukrainian.

The directory, which has had more than 2,000 searches since it launched, has been helpful for Bieliaha, whose life changed in many ways after she arrived in Winnipeg in October 2022.

She soon met her future husband, Alex, who also came from Ukraine and had lived in Kyiv, too.

“In a relatively short time, our lives have grow in ways we could have never imagined,” Bieliaha said by phone from Mexico while on a family vacation.

Bieliaha, who had been a real estate agent in Ukraine for seven years, had to start from scratch when she arrived in Canada. She spotted a large promotional billboard seeking agents and reached out to ask about a job. When she didn’t receive a reply, she took a position as a manager at a Winnipeg beauty salon.

When that job switched to part-time, she left and worked at a recruitment firm.

“During this time, I started to understand that I really need to go in my own direction, with something I really know how to do,” she said.

Canada’s homebuying market is different from Ukraine, she said, and the transition was daunting. In Kyiv, she had an established client base. She also knew the money would not come quickly.

To supplement her income in those early days, she began making instructional real estate videos on social media — posting on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok in both her native language and English.

“It was hard. I had a six-month-old baby at the time,” she said.

She recognized the need for a Ukrainian-speaking agent, especially as more than 30,000 Ukrainians have immigrated to Winnipeg since 2022. Gradually, she built up a client base.

After obtaining her licence in May 2025, the hard work began to pay off. Bieliaha said she gained five clients right away and sold her first home within her first week. She has since closed 18 deals.

“It’s not the best I can do,” she said. “But I have a 22-month-old baby. I have a husband and I need to see him sometimes. So I think it’s good results.”

Olha Vovkotrub arrived in Winnipeg with her husband and daughter in 2022, with a dream of one day opening her own restaurant.

She said there wasn’t a lot of local Ukrainian community information available when her family arrived — something the new directory helps to address.

“We have a lot of experience in business, be we think and know Ukrainian metrics,” she said.

Vovkotrub’s dream became reality in 2023, when she opened Sushi Point at 238 Portage Ave.

“We started an advertising business here and I wanted to open my restaurant,” she said. “My husband supported me, and I run the restaurant myself.”

The restaurant employs a staff of Ukrainians, many of whom have experience in the sushi business.

And why sushi? Vovkotrub said she couldn’t find the Ukrainian taste when she arrived here.

“We found that tastes in Canada and Ukraine were different,” she said. “We have different products and tastes. So we decided to open our sushi bar to have our tasty sushi every day.”

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca