More than 100 people — many from the province’s Ukrainian community — spread out Friday across the former site of the Southwood Golf and Country Club near the University of Manitoba in Fort Garry, searching for one of their own.
Anatolii Ishchenko has been missing since Jan. 22. He was last seen in the 2300 block of Pembina Highway, between Markham Road and Bison Drive.
Organizers of the first large-scale field search for the 30-year-old said he had been experiencing panic attacks and called an ambulance on the morning of his disappearance. He arrived at Victoria General Hospital around 10:30 a.m. but left without being tended to by medical staff around noon.
Mike Sudoma / Free Press
At the former location of the Southwood Gold and Country Club, Valeriia Barova looks for clues as to the whereabouts of Anatolii Ischenko.
“It was a very cold day, it was -35 C, feels like -48 C, and that’s why we are concerned because his phone was not responding starting from 2:30 p.m.,” said Oksana Burchak, who helped organize Friday’s search.
Ishchenko came to Canada alone in 2022, among thousands of Ukrainians displaced after Russia’s invasion of their homeland. He still has family in Ukraine, including his parents and brother, while some relatives have moved to California.
Burchak, with the group Girls from Ukrainian Moms in Winnipeg, said Ishchenko had lost his job at Motor Coach Industries Ltd. just days before he went missing and had sought psychological help.
His friend, Serhii Zadorozhniak, who lived in the same apartment building near Pembina Highway north of Abinojii Mikanah, said Ishchenko became increasingly isolated about a year earlier.
“Something happened with him, I don’t know what,” Zadorozhniak said, adding that Ishchenko stopped speaking with him. “But he was a good guy.”
Zadorozhniak joined the search party, holding on to hope.
“Maybe he’s hiding somewhere, maybe he’s still alive,” he said.
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Anatolii Ishchenko, 30, has been missing since Jan. 22.
Burchak said she takes a more measured view, given how long Ishchenko has been missing.
“I’m not optimistic. I’m realistic,” she said. “I really hope that we will find him and a miracle will happen, that we will find him alive, somewhere in the downtown area or somebody picked him up from the streets.”
Burchak said Ishchenko had been planning to travel to the United States, but all of his documents, including his passport, were found in his apartment after his disappearance.
Yevgeniya Tatarenko, another organizer of the search, said they just want to bring Ishchenko home to his mother back in Ukraine.
“I’m a mom, too,” she said. “I can’t imagine their mom being in Ukraine, and just going through this.”
Buffalo Stone Man, also known as Darryl Taylor, led a prayer song before the search began. He’s known Tatarenko for a decade now, and he adopted her as his “soul daughter” after Tatarenko’s father died four years ago.
Taylor said Friday’s search, which was slated to last until 6 p.m., checks off one of the boxes.
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Serhii Zadorozhniak, a former neighbour of Ishchenko, was keeping his thoughts positive prior to searching for his friend Friday afternoon.
“He’s got a whole family pondering and wondering, ‘Where is he?’” he said. “As Indigenous people, we have been going through this for many generations. So we understand what they’re going through. Ultimately, we have to open our arms and say to the Ukrainian people, that you’re welcome to our territory, and we want to support your initiative, because we know what you’re going through.”
Burchak, who said they found an iPhone case halfway through the search that resembled that of Ishchenko’s, said this is not her first search.
She helped organize two in 2024, including for Nikita Boiarskyi, 18, who was found dead at Niakwa Country Club in May 2024. Burchak said her daughter went to school with Boiarskyi. Boiarskyi, like Ishchenko, fled Ukraine with this family in 2022.
The second came shortly after. Burchak said she was speaking with the medical examiner about the Boiarskyi’s death when she learned that another person they had been searching for was already there.
She said many Ukrainians struggle with the stress of integrating into Canadian society, including learning English.
When they call for emergency help, she said, they are often taken to hospital but not seen right away due to the province’s “overloaded” health-care system. Because they may appear physically well, they are not always treated as high-priority patients.
“Unfortunately, we’ve had quite a few such cases,” she said.
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Searchers used specific search points in Google Maps to direct the search.
The search grid was mapped by drawing a line from the hospital to Ishchenko’s home. Friday’s effort focused on the former Southwood golf course, with searchers using an app to track which areas had been covered.
A group had already searched St. Vital Park for several days. With the snow beginning to melt, more ground could be surveyed. On Friday, the shelter by the duck pond served as a home base.
Volunteers arrived to a warm lunch of borscht and buns, were organized into teams, and then set out to cover their assigned areas.
Victor Lagasse, Trevor Fulford and Dale Lui—all of whom live nearby—heard about the search through a post on Reddit’s Winnipeg subreddit.
“I live just by Victoria Hospital now,” Fulford said, adding that he grew up just down the street from St. Vital Park. I know the park like the back of my hand. I just felt compelled to come out and do anything that I possibly could to help.”
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Lui, Fulford’s brother-in-law, said he’d had search and rescue experience during his time in the military.
“Naturally, you hope that you can find the people safe and sound, but you have to treat the tasks with some sense of sombreness and seriousness,” he said. “And just all you can do is the best you can in the situation. You don’t try to think too hard. You’re just trying to get the job done.”
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Missing posters for Anatolii Ishchenko on a table inside of the warming hut at the St Vital Park Duck Pond Friday.
Lagasse said the three hunt and fish together a lot, and hope their experience “playing in the woods,” as he put it, could help.
“Just help the community out,” he said.
scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca
Scott Billeck is a general assignment reporter for the Free Press. A Creative Communications graduate from Red River College, Scott has more than a decade’s worth of experience covering hockey, football and global pandemics. He joined the Free Press in 2024. Read more about Scott.
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